BEIJING — Half a century after the Soviet Union beat the United States to outer space, China blasted off its first lunar orbiter Wednesday, catapulting the Asian nation onto the front lines of a new space race aimed at giving it bragging rights as a rising world power.
The Chang'e 1 satellite, named after a mythical beauty who flew to the moon, lifted off under cloudy skies in south-central China's Sichuan province aboard a Long March 3A rocket. It will spend a year circling and studying the lunar surface and laying the groundwork for the ultimate goal of making China the first Asian nation to put an astronaut on the moon.
The liftoff was broadcast live on state television, witnessed by government officials and about 2,000 space enthusiasts who paid about $100 each to see it on-site. The expensive technological spectacle was preceded by the evacuation of thousands of poor farmers in nearby villages who had to temporarily put away their plows and walk away from their pigs as a safety precaution in case of a mishap with the launch or with spooked farm animals.
Like holding the Olympics, the lunar mission is a symbolic opportunity for China to boost national pride in the one-party state.
"These things serve as a cohesive force for the whole nation," said Ivan Choy, a political scientist at the City University of Hong Kong. "Even if you don't believe in communism, at least you will try to accept that it is the leadership of the Communist Party that has made China strong and able to compete with the other superpowers."
Beijing aspires to put an astronaut on the moon within 10 to 15 years, putting it ahead of Japan, which launched an unmanned moon orbiter last month, and India, which hopes to do the same in April.
The Chinese launch of the Chang'e marks the first step of a quest to land a moon rover, probably in 2012, and another one about five years later, to bring back soil samples.
China says its intentions are peaceful, but its space ambitions startled the world in 2003 when it became the third nation, after the Soviet Union and the United States, to send an astronaut into space aboard its own rocket. Astronaut Yang Liwei's one-day journey around Earth was followed two years later by a flight by two astronauts who spent five days in space.
Next year's planned mission is expected to carry three Chinese astronauts, known as taikonauts, who could also attempt the country's first spacewalk.
