Chinese efforts to perfect procedures on space missions are being practiced on lunar flyby and return missions. With the intention of performing more advanced moon missions in the future, a Long March 3C rocket was launched Thursday carrying a robotic space probe and will travel around the moon and back to Earth to test current technology.

The hope is that data and modification made through this exploration will allow for a scheduled robotic sample return in 2017. The 184-foot-long rocket booster left Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the Sichuan province Thursday.

"The test spacecraft separated from its carrier rocket and entered the expected orbit shortly after the liftoff," a website with the Xinhua News Agency, iCrossChina, reported.

The unmanned vehicle, also referred to as the Chang'e-5, is expected to orbit the moon and return to Earth's surface in about a week. The landing target is China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

"The mission is to obtain experimental data and validate re-entry technologies such as guidance, navigation and control, heat shield and trajectory design for a future touch-down on the moon by Chang'e-5, which is expected to be sent to the moon, collect samples and return to Earth in 2017," iCrossChina continued. "It is the first time China has conducted a test involving a half-orbit around the moon at a height of [236,000 miles] before having the spacecraft return to Earth."

A rocket expert quoted by the Chinese news agency and CBS, Jiang Jie, said the flight return posed an engineering challenge as "the mission requires that the rocket send the spacecraft to a fixed spot in space...Any inaccuracy will mean that the spacecraft will fail to enter the moon's orbit.

Chang'e-5 is the fifth generation in a line of spacecraft launched intermitted between 2007 and 2013. The most recent, Chang'e-3, landed on the surface of the moon in Dec. 2013, the first craft to successfully do so since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 vehicle in 1976.