CHINA'S first lunar probe Chang'e 1 completed its third braking maneuver and reached its final planned lunar orbit this morning.

The Beijing Aerospace Control Center issued the braking command at 8:24am as Chang'e 1 roamed to the perilune – the point on an elliptical lunar orbit that is nearest to the moon -- and it decelerated and entered the 127-minute working orbit at 8:34am.

The craft, named after a mythical Chinese goddess who flew to the moon, slowed its speed to 1.59 kilometers a second from 1.8 km a second when it entered the round orbit — where it will stay for a year with its perilune at a steady 200km from the moon surface for scientific explorations.

"In the prolonged period, the probe can carry out some other scientific tests, which may help acquire experience for China's second- and third-stage moon missions," Bian Bingxiu, a researcher with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, told Xinhua yesterday.

The satellite completed its second braking maneuver at 11:21am yesterday, decreasing its speed from 1.948 km a second to 1.8 km a second when it entered a 3.5-hour orbit.

The orbiter carried out its first braking maneuver at 11:15am on Monday when it was about 300 km from the moon.

It slowed from the previous 2.4km a second to about 1.9 km to 2 km a second and entered a 12-hour elliptical lunar orbit at 11:37am on Monday, making it the country's first moon satellite — a milestone in China's aerospace history.

The center cancelled two pre-set orbital corrections while the probe traveled along the Earth-moon transfer orbit from October 31 to November 5, calling them "unnecessary" as Chang'e-1 had been running accurately on the expected trajectory.

So far, the satellite has experienced four orbital transfers, one orbital correction and three braking maneuvers, which use up a great deal of fuel.

Because of the planned maneuvers, the fuel that the 2,350-kg Chang'e-1 carries accounts for nearly half of the satellite's total weight.

The probe blasted off on a Long March 3A carrier rocket on October 24 from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province, marking the first step of China's ambitious 10-year moon plan, which will lead to a moon landing and launch of a moon rover at around 2012.

In the third phase, another rover will land on the moon and return to earth with lunar soil and stone samples for scientific research at around 2017.

It is scheduled to relay the first picture of the moon later this month, and will continue to explore the moon for a year.

The satellite is equipped with a stereo camera and interferometer, an imager and gamma/x-ray spectrometer, a laser altimeter, a microwave detector, a high-energy solar particle detector and a low-energy ion detector.

It will fulfill four scientific objectives including a three-dimensional survey of the moon's surface.