China's first lunar probe, Chang'e-1, completed its nearly two-million-km flying journey to the moon successfully on Wednesday morning and entered its working orbit.

The probe, following instructions of the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC), started its third braking at 8:24 a.m. and entered a 127-minute round polar circular orbit at 8:34 a.m. after completing the braking.

The TV pictures showed work staff in the ground control center hailing the success with colored newsletters featuring a black headline "Circling the Moon, We Made It!" on the front page.

TV scenes also highlighted gray-haired Luan Enjie, chief commander of China's lunar probe project, and also silver-haired Sun Jiadong, chief designer of the project, wearing smiles and holding hands together tightly.

"It marks success of the probe's long flight to the moon," Luan said.

"The satellite entered the designed working orbit just in time and very accurately today," said Sun, who has joined hands with Luan for more than a decade to develop, test and carry out the country's ambitious lunar probe project.

Ye Peijian, chief commander and designer in charge of the satellite system, considered it "a landmark moment". "It proves that we have the ability to send our satellite to circle around the moon."

China sent its first satellite into the Earth orbit in 1970, with major new breakthroughs in its space program achieved in recent years.

The country carried out its maiden piloted space flight in October 2003, making it the third country after the former Soviet Union and the United States to have sent men into space. In October 2005, China completed its second manned space flight, with two astronauts on board.

"Chang'e-1 has presented an extraordinary achievement, since it's the first time that Chinese scientists manage to maneuver a satellite 390,000 km away from the earth," said Wang Yejun, chief engineer of the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC).

"The probe will travel along the orbit at a stable altitude of 200 km above the moon's surface. In each circle, it will always pass the two polars," Wang said.

The round orbit is also the final destination of the probe, where it is supposed to start carrying out all the planned scientific exploration tasks.

"The probe's precise entry into the orbit has laid a solid foundation for its future work, and we are confident that Chang'e-1 will continue to fulfill the aims step by step," said Ma Xingrui, general manager of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASTC) in charge of the rocket and satellite systems.

The 2,350-kg satellite carried eight probing facilities, including 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.

According to the project's plan, Chang'e-1 will open all the instruments aboard it to start scientific explorations after a period of orbit testing.