CHINA has launched an experimental spacecraft to fly around the moon and back to Earth in preparation for the country's first unmanned return trip to the lunar surface.

The eight-day programme is a test run for a 2017 mission that aims to have a Chinese spacecraft land on the moon, retrieve samples and return to Earth. That would make China only the third country, after the USA and Russia, to have carried out such a mission.

The spacecraft lifted off from the Xichang satellite launch centre, separated from its carrier rocket and entered Earth orbit shortly afterwards, the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence said.

China's lunar-exploration programme, named Chang'e after a mythical goddess, has already launched a pair of orbiting lunar probes and last year landed a craft, with a rover on board, on the moon.