CHINA'S first Mars probe is scheduled to be launched in October, 2009. The orbiter will blast off atop a Russian rocket, said Chen Changya, a researcher in charge of the project.

The news comes just as the country announced it will set up the world's first observation tower on the moon.

The Mars probe is expected to reach the red planet in September, 2010, and will eventually send back China's first pictures of Mars, Chen told a forum in Hainan Province on Sunday. The probe is undergoing a series of tests and will connect with a Russian rocket in May next year, Chen said.

The probe, Yinghuo I, weighs 110 kilograms and resembles a typical weather orbiter, with two solar panels on both sides of a cubic module.

The probe is being developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology and supported by space experts and astronomers from around the country.

The orbiter will be completed by June 2009, just four months before it will be launched by a Russian Soyuz-2 Rocket, which will also carry Russia's unmanned Mars rover, Phobos-Grunt.

The journey to Mars will take nearly a year as the distance at its closest orbital position to the Earth is 56.7 million kilometers. A full orbit of Mars will take the best part of a year.

Yinghuo I will be equipped with scientific devices, including cameras and equipment to analyze magnetic levels and explore reasons behind the disappearance of water.

Meanwhile, the lunar-observation station will come in the second phase of China's moon project, Ouyang Ziyuan, an academic at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in Shanghai.

"There is no atmosphere or magnetic field on the moon so optical telescopes can detect more things," Ouyang said during a public lecture organized by Wenhui Daily on Sunday. o"One night on the moon lasts 14 days on Earth, thus we can conduct long-term observation and even locate UV rays," he said.