China says moon pictures not faked from NASA

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has dismissed Internet gossip that its first photo of the moon taken from a lunar orbiter might have been plagiarized from NASA, local media said on Monday.

The country launched its first lunar probe, the Chang'e 1, in October and released a photo featuring a patch of grey moon surface splotched with craters last week, hailing the mission as a "complete success."

But some Chinese Internet users have questioned its originality after comparing it with an almost identical lunar image from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 2005.

"There is absolutely no forgery," Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist for the lunar probe, told the Beijing News.

The Chinese and U.S. lunar images looked similar only because they had aimed at the same area of the moon's southern hemisphere, Ouyang was quoted as saying.

"But a careful examination will tell some small differences," Ouyang said.

There were two craters on a certain spot of the Chinese photo, but there was only one on that same spot of the American picture, the Beijing News quoted him as saying.

"Maybe it's because the resolution of the American photo was not high enough, or a new pit might have been generated by an asteroid hitting the moon between 2005 and 2007," Ouyang said.

"I understand the doubts of the Internet surfers. They hope the Chinese lunar probe can do well so they don't want the photo to turn out to be fake," he said.