China shoots for moon later this year

China set two more ambitious goals for its space programthis week, announcing it will launch an unmanned lunar orbiter in the second half of 2007 and a probe to Mars by 2009, according to reports from the Xinhua news agency.

The lunar orbiter, scheduled to launch later this year, will take 3-D images of the moon's surface. If successful, itwill pave the way for a lunar landing mission, Xinhua quoted National Space Administration director Sun Laiyan as saying Sunday in a speech at Beijing Jiaotong University.

In 2003, China joined the United States and the Soviet Union as just the third country to put a person into space and has since set an aggressive timetable for its space program in the hopes of catching up to Europe and the U.S.

An unmanned landing on the moon is expected to follow the lunar orbiter mission in 2012. The six-wheeled rover under development will reportedly run on nuclear power, as opposed to the rechargeable lithium ion batteries used to power the U.S.'s Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

China's mission to Mars will be a joint venture with Russia and will launch in October 2009, Xinhua said, quoting sources in the Shanghai Space Administration.

The joint mission was first signed in March 2007. China will contribute the probe, or satellite, to the mission while Russia will supply the landing vehicle, Phobos-Grunt.

Phobos-Grunt is designed to take rock samples and return them to Earth.

The race to explore the moon and Mars is reminiscent of the earlier space race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s.

China has ambitions to land a person on the moon in 15 years, or by 2022, putting its timetable very close to that of the United States.

NASA has already announced plans to have its new class of Orion spacecraft begin its first flight in 2014 and land a four-person team on the moon by 2020.