China to Launch Manned Moon Mission by 2020

In an official white paper published here, the Chinese government has laid out its intentions to launch a manned mission to the moon by 2020.

The whitepaper cites

Accordance with the "around, down, back to the" three-step development of ideas, to promote lunar exploration project construction, launch lunar soft landing and lunar Surveyor, to achieve a soft landing on the moon and the inspection probe, the second step to complete lunar exploration mission . Start the implementation of the lunar sample return as the goal of lunar exploration mission the third step.  [Translation by Google]

In 2003 China became only the third country to send one of its citizens into space independently. Yang Liwei's mission aboard Shenzhou 5 was followed by another substantial milestone when Zhai Zhigang conducted the first Chinese spacewalk five years later.

China has mapped the moon from two orbiting spacecraft and has plans for an unmanned lander, a lunar rover, and a mission to return 2kg of moon rock to Earth by 2020. The space agency this year demonstrated in-orbit rendezvous and docking tests between two spacecraft, laying the foundations for the construction of a future space station.

The emergence of China as a space-faring nation has the potential to threaten US and Russian prestige in space, by inspiring a new generation with headline-grabbing crewed missions.