Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

BEIJING (AFP) - Asia's space race heated up on Wednesday as China launched its first lunar orbiter, an event hailed by the world's most populous nation as a milestone event in its global rise.

China's year-long expedition, costing 1.4 billion yuan (184 million dollars), kicks off a programme that aims to land an unmanned rover on the moon's surface by 2012 and put a man on the moon by about 2020.

TALK ABOUT FOREPLAY! A news story describing a successful launch of China's long-awaited space mission and including detailed dialogue between astronauts launched on the Internet Thursday, hours before the rocket had even left the ground.

China set two more ambitious goals for its space program this 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, it will 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.

The Chinese moon mission Chang'e was sent to make a map of the Earths moon. The Chinese government has this map right now, but will it release it to the public or will it rot in some closed archive? Xinhua has already released a scaled down version, see a bigger version here. But don't expect the full sized thing.

Chinese gathered to see Zhang Tong, the first Chinese man to go into space without being chained inside the rocket (in case it's not immediately obvious - this is satirical).

The Chinese space program is slowly developing. Finally China sent a probe to the moon in order to find new resources like aluminum. Do they want to mine it there?

You might conclude that when listening to the Chinese government...

Can a country building high-end jet fighters and talking of a mission to mine the moon still call itself a developing country? China can, or at least, it does.

China broadcast greetings and two Taiwanese songs from its first moon probe on Sunday

Remember, this is a humorous (ha ha funny) caption contest, not a space to vent all the frustration with Central Asian politics you've been storing inside for years and have only learned how to release since finding this awesome blog. (Diatribes and manifestos are still welcome on other posts.)