China completes first moon-and-back mission November 1, 2014 - 11:36AM Beijing: China has completed its first return mission to the moon with the successful re-entry and landing of an unmanned probe. In the latest step forward for Beijing's ambitious space program, the probe landed safely in northern China's Inner Mongolia region, state news agency Xinhua said. Xinhua said the probe took "some incredible pictures" of the Earth and the moon. Before re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, the unnamed probe was travelling at 11.2 kilometres per second, a speed that can generate temperatures of more than 1500 degrees. To slow it down, scientists let the craft "bounce" off Earth's atmosphere before re-entering again and landing. The probe's mission was to travel to the moon, fly around it and head back to Earth, the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence said at the probe's launch eight days ago. Beijing sees its multi-billion-dollar space program as a marker of its rising global stature and mounting technical expertise. The military-run space project has plans for a permanent orbiting station by 2020 and eventually to send a human to the moon.