FACTBOX: China sends "lunar goddess" to the moon

(Reuters) - China launched its first moon orbiter on Wednesday amidst a blaze of patriotic propaganda celebrating the country's space ambitions and technological prowess.

Here are some facts about the Chang'e One orbiter and China's lunar probe program:

-- The Chang'e One orbiter, named after a lunar goddess, blasted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in the southwestern province of Sichuan at 1005 GMT. It is expected to arrive in moon orbit on November 5.

-- The satellite is expected to beam back its first pictures of the moon in late November and continue in lunar orbit for about a year, taking 3D images of the surface and analyzing the distribution of elements.

-- Wednesday's launch marks the first step in China's three-stage moon mission, to be followed by an unmanned moon landing and deployment of a moon rover planned for 2012 and the retrieval of lunar soil and stone samples around 2017.

Chinese scientists have talked of the possibility of sending a man to the moon after 2020.

-- The Chang'e project, formally approved in January 2004, has so far cost 1.4 billion yuan ($187 million). About 10,000 people have been involved in the mainly military-run project.

-- Chang'e One was put aloft by a Long March 3A rocket from Sichuan province, more than 2,000 km southwest of Beijing.

Its successors are likely to be launched from a new site on the southern island of Hainan because next-generation Long March 5 rockets are too big for the railway tunnels in mountainous Sichuan, Chinese media reported.

-- Chang'e is a mythical Chinese goddess who was banished to the earth with her husband for offending a heavenly emperor. Stealing an elixir for eternal life, she flew to the moon only to regret abandoning her husband and ending up sad and lonely.

-- The Chang'e One orbiter will beam back to the earth 32 songs selected by the Chinese government and public, including the national anthem and the classic revolutionary tune "The East is Red", also broadcast by China's first satellite in 1970.

Most of the songs are patriotic, traditionally Chinese music, but they will also include moon-themed songs, such as Chinese pop diva Faye Wong's rendition of a famous Song Dynasty poem.

-- China started its space program in the 1960s. In 2003, it became only the third country, after the United States and the former Soviet Union, to put a man into space. It sent two men into orbit in 2005 and plans a space walk in 2008.

-- The Chang'e One launch came on the heels of Japan's Kaguya lunar explorer, which blasted off in September. India and the United States also plan lunar probe launches by the end of 2008.

Sources: Reuters/Xinhua news agency/China National Space Administration (www.cnsa.gov.cn/www.clep.org.cn)

($1=7.492 Yuan)

(Reporting by Guo Shipeng in Beijing)