With a regional space race heating up in Asia, China has launched its first lunar probe this past Wednesday as the Communist Party moved a step closer to fulfilling its ambitions of one day reaching the moon. The Chang’e-1 satellite, named after a Chinese goddess who flew to the moon, lifted off at 6:05 p.m.

The probe will to orbit the moon for the next year, providing satellite images and other information as China prepares to launch a space vehicle to the moon by 2012 and then send an astronaut by 2020. Within an hour of blastoff the probe’s solar panels had been activated, and space officials declared the launching a success.