BEIJING, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- China's first lunar probe will conduct its first orbit transfer on Thursday afternoon, an engineer with the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC) said Wednesday.

Zhou Jianliang, deputy chief engineer of the BACC, said the Chang'e-1 lunar probe, launched on Wednesday, will be transferred to an orbit with a perigee of about 600 kilometers on Thursday afternoon.

The satellite is circularizing earth in a 16-hour orbit at 205 kilometers perigee and 50,930 kilometers apogee, statistics from BACC shows.

The 2,300-kilogram orbiter will experience four accelerations, which will shorten its distance to the moon orbit. It is expected to enter earth-moon transfer orbit on October 31 and arrive in the moon's orbit on November 5.

The circumlunar satellite blasted off on a Long March 3A carrier rocket at 6:05 p.m. Wednesday from the No. 3 launching tower in the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwestern Sichuan Province.