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.
Germany hopes to put an unmanned space craft into the moon's orbit in the early part of the next decade.
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.
Google has put up a $30m prize in an effort to trigger a race to put the first privately financed space mission on the moon.
China has dismissed suggestions that it is in a race with Japan to put a space probe in orbit around the moon.
As part of the Bush administration's effort to forge a close strategic partnership with India, NASA has announced it will piggyback one of its lunar probes on India's lunar mission. Critics argue that cooperating with India will weaken the voluntary Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).
NASA is fleshing out details of launch vehicles, robotic and human exploration systems that can enable a sustained back to the Moon effort, including possible establishment of an Antarctic-like lunar outpost.
Dr. Paul D. Spudis testifies before a US Senate subcommittee on the case for a new NASA initiative to explore and develop the moon.
A 78-million-dollar unmanned lunar mission plan seeks to showcase India's scientific prowess and stake its claim to join a select club for future planetary missions, a top space official said.