NAYSAYERS take note - China's first lunar orbiter, Chang'e 1, is performing with clockwork precision ... and that's official.

The orbiter is expected to send its first pictures of the moon back to Earth ahead of schedule on November 26, a project engineer said over the weekend.

He was responding to questions by Beijing-based reporters about recent rumors that have swept the Internet claiming the craft has disappeared from its orbit.

The rumors started to gather momentum last Monday when some Chinese media outlets reported that Chang'e 1 will lose contact with Earth for 45 minutes.

"It's groundless to say the orbiter has disappeared," Zhu Yilin, a researcher of the project from the Chinese Space Technology Institute, was quoted by www.sina.com.cn as saying.

He said it takes about 127 minutes for Chang'e 1 to make a single circumnavigation of the moon. However, engineers at home can't receive signals from the orbiter during half of that period when the craft is directly between the moon and the Earth.

In that timeframe, the mass of the moon blocks communications between the orbiter and the Earth, which is nothing unusual in lunar exploration, Zhu said. The bottom line, he stressed, is that the orbiter is working normally and there is no need for people to worry.

Zhu said the orbiter will have fine-tuned its position and equipment by tomorrow and will then start scientific explorations.

Chang'e 1 will send its first lunar pictures, together with other data, back to Earth on November 26, a little earlier than the previously announced "month's end."

Chang'e 1, which was named after a Chinese goddess who, as legend has it, flew to the moon, was launched on October 24.

It is the first step in the country's three-stage lunar-exploration program, which will lead to a moon landing and the launch of a lunar rover in about 2012.