Under a new five-year plan unveiled in December, China will continue to make methodical progress in human spaceflight, expand its satellite navigation system, explore the moon and seek space technology partnerships with developing nations.

Broadening its challenge to the United States, the Chinese government on Thursday announced an ambitious five-year plan for space exploration that would move China closer to becoming a major rival at a time when the American program is in retreat.

Buzz Aldrin and other space policy experts argue that the U.S. should not engage in a 'space race' to the moon with China and India as it would tie up resources that could be used to develop Mars-bound technology and would jeopardize the legacy of U.S. dominance in space exploration.

Michio Kaku surveys the growing number nations planning competing missions to the moon (including Japan, China, India, and the U.S.) and argues that the growing lunar competition should motivate a re-examination of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty "before national rivalries and tensions heat up as we approach 2020."

Japan is considering putting a robot on the moon by 2020 and an astronaut by 2030, a report from a government office showed on Friday, amid fears that the country will be left behind in Asia's space race.

Both the U.S. and China have announced intentions of returning humans to the moon by 2020 at the earliest. And the two countries are already in the early stages of a new space race that appears to have some of the heat and skullduggery of the one between Washington and Moscow during the Cold War, when space was a proxy battleground for geopolitical dominance.

Asia's main powers are warming up for a big space race. China launched its first lunar orbiter, the Chang'e-1, on a Long March 3A rocket last week. Japan had sent its Kaguya lunar probe a month earlier. India, South Korea and Taiwan are preparing to join in. This race is largely driven by what scholars call "techno-nationalism". Successful space missions generate pride domestically and demonstrate prowess internationally.

China launched its first lunar probe Wednesday. Japan sent an orbiter up last month. India is close behind. It's an economic competition with military undertones.

Fifty years after Sputnik, the Cold War battle for the cosmos is history but new international rivalries over controlling the final frontier have emerged.

Asia's race to the Moon began yesterday when Japan launched an unmanned lunar probe, the most ambitious mission of its kind since the United States' Apollo missions of the 1970s.