The rocket is five meters wide and cannot be transported via railway or expressway to any of the nation's current launch centers. As a result, a production plant is being built in the coastal city Tianjin from where the rockets will be shipped to a new launch facility at Wenchang in the island province of Hainan that lies south off the mainland coast. The total investment in the new plant is estimated at 4.5 billion yuan ($657 million). The first phase of its construction will be completed at the end of 2009.

The first rocket of the Long March family was launched on April 24, 1970, projecting China's first satellite Dongfanghong 1 into space. Since then, Long March rockets have carried out 107 missions.

On June 9, a Long March-3B rocket lifted a new telecommunications satellite, Zhongxing 9, into space from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province. China Satcom ordered the satellite from the France-based Thales Alenia Space. The satellite will be used for live television broadcast of the Beijing Olympic Games in August.

Moon Map Almost Done

China has collected all the data needed to draw its first full map of the moon's surface, Sun Jiadong, Chief Designer of the country's Chang'e-1 lunar probe said.

The lunar probe, launched on October 24, 2007, is running well, Sun was quoted by the July 6 issue of The Beijing News as saying.

China published its first picture of the moon on November 26 last year.

The future of Chang'e-1, whose life expectancy is one year, had not been decided, Sun said, adding that each and every system of the orbiter is working normally.

The launch of Chang'e-1 is the first step of China's three-stage lunar probe program, which also includes the launch of a lunar rover in 2012 and a second rover that will collect lunar soil and stone samples for research in 2017.