The timetable for China's first manned moon landing, as well as the launch of a space station, lab and probes to explore Mars and Venus, was announced by scientists over the weekend.

Chinese analysts, however, dismissed international concerns that Beijing is engaging in an outer-space arms race, stressing that recent activities and future missions are for scientific purposes and for the benefit of mankind.
In a visit to the country's space base in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, Saturday, Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut to voyage beyond the planet's atmosphere in 2003, revealed plans to launch the country's first unmanned space laboratory, Tiangong-1, next year, which is expected to accomplish the country's first unmanned docking with Shenzhen-8, a crucial step toward building a space station.

Both the manned spacecraft Shenzhou-9 and the unmanned Shenzhou-10 will be launched in 2012 to dock with the Tiangong space laboratory, and by around 2020 China will launch its first orbital space station, Yang said.
      
Meanwhile, at an aerospace engineering forum Thursday, Ye Peijian, Commander in Chief of the Chang'e Program and an academic at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said China's lunar-probe program, the country's first step toward deep-space exploration, is expected to orbit the moon, land and return to Earth by 2020.

Ye proposed that China launch its first manned moon landing in 2025, a probe to Mars by 2013 and to Venus by 2015.

"China has the full capacity to accomplish Mars exploration by 2013," Ye said.

Earlier this month, Wu Weiren, the chief engineer overseeing China's lunar exploration program, also revealed that work on the Chang'e-2 lunar orbiter had entered the pre-launch testing stage and it would make its first trial flight before the end of the year.

Chang'e-2 will carry out a soft-landing test in preparation for the launch of Chang'e-3, which is scheduled for 2013.

The Chang'e Project is named after a Chinese legend of a goddess who took a magic elixir and flew to the moon.  
Space-program officials had said previously that the Chang'e-2 mission would be launched in October around the Mid Autumn Festival, dedicated to the Moon Goddess, Chang'e, but no precise date has been given.

Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of China's lunar orbiter project, told the Global Times that China's plan to launch an orbital space station by around 2020 is achievable, based on aerospace technology development and the success of  future manned missions.

China's space program will pose great challenges to scientists and technicians, Ouyang said, adding that the space station will be quite small in size compared with the International Space Station, a joint collaboration between 16 countries, including the US and Russia.

Huang Hai, a professor at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (BUAA), told the Global Times that a space station was vital for future scientific research.

"A space station is a good platform for spacecraft and a research lab. It is the ultimate purpose of manned space technology," Huang said, adding that the cost would vary depending on the size of the station.

"China will build a smaller one, for perhaps 10 to 20 people, which is affordable for one single country," he said.

Arms-race fears

However, China's space program appears to have stoked speculation that it is being used for military surveillance.

"The People's Liberation Army has been working on various forms of space-warfare programs for a long time," Larry Wortzel, vice chairman of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, was quoted by US-based Defense News as saying.

Referring to China's recent maneuvers, which reportedly involve rendezvous operations between the Shijian-06F satellite and the more recently launched Shijian-12 craft, Wortzel said the rendezvous might have been part of China's effort to develop space weapons, "or it could be completely innocent, or a combination" of the two. ?
China said the Shijian-12 craft was mainly used for scientific research, environmental monitoring and telecommunications.

Weng Jingnong, a BUAA professor, told the Global Times that the priority of China's space program is to serve civilian purposes, including disaster management and environmental protection. "Given the frequent natural disasters China has experienced in recent years, it is increasingly important to use space technology to monitor extreme weather," he said.

Liu Linlin and Guo Qiang contributed to this story

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