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.

China has dismissed suggestions that it is in a race with Japan to put a space probe in orbit around the moon.

A new military competition threatens to accelerate international efforts to dominate space, four experts agreed yesterday at a major nonproliferation conference here. Whether the race will end in chaos or in concord remains to be seen.

A new race to the moon is getting underway, with China, Russia, Japan, India, and the U.S. all developing programs to exploit the moon for national prestige or its vast mineral and energy resources.

An unprecedented salvo of international probes will soon shoot for the Moon, all equipped to signal that a new era of lunar exploration has begun. If schedules hold, spacecraft from India, China and Japan will be moonbound before NASA's own Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter swings into action in 2008. Already on duty, the European Space Agency's SMART-1 is wrapping up its survey work.

James Oberg analyzes China's civillian space program and finds that "despite Western theorizing about space challenges — a new moon race or even a military conquest of the heavens — the most plausible rationale for the Shenzhou program appears to be what Chinese leaders have always stated. They expect that it will be good for China, the Chinese people and for the ruling regime."