When a rocket carrying a weather satellite blasted into orbit last month it did more than restore confidence in Japan's battered space program -- it ignited talk of a space race with the country's old rival, China.
Forty years after the heyday of the US-Soviet space race, the emerging contest between these two Asian powers is already showing signs of ferocity.
China may have put a man into orbit, but Japan, it seems, intends to build a station for him on the Moon. This is no small boast from a country whose previous launch, in November 2003, ended in ignominy when a rocket carrying two spy satellites had to be destroyed 10 minutes into the mission after a booster failed to separate.
The loss of the satellites was bad enough. That the failure came only a month after China had become the third nation to put a man in orbit compounded the embarrassment of Japan's space agency, JAXA.
While Tokyo's space team went back to the drawing board, Beijing's leaders took every opportunity to use their success to demonstrate China's rising power.
Within hours of the first yuhangyuan (space voyager), Lieutenant Colonel Yang Liwei (
Japan is fighting back. The Mainichi Shimbum reported last week that Tokyo plans to establish a manned space station on the Moon and to have its own version of the US space shuttle up and running by 2025.
JAXA also hopes to put an exploratory robot on the Moon by 2010 and, five years later, to have developed the technology needed for humans to stay on the Moon for extended periods.
Officials acknowledge the plans, but insist they are still at the discussion stage.
"We are talking in that way, but nothing has been fixed," said Yoshifumi Inatani, of JAXA's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science.
"We haven't decided on specifics or the budget required or any of the details," Inatani said.
Given the strong anti-Japanese sentiment among the Chinese public, and the frosty relations at government level, there is little doubt that China's National Space Administration will not want to be upstaged by its Japanese counterpart. Beijing, not surprisingly, also has its eyes on the Moon.
Last year, the country established a project to collect lunar samples. The first, 1.4 billion yuan (US$169.1 million) stage of the Chang'e project -- named after a fairy in a popular folk tale who flew to the Moon -- is expected to be completed in 2007 with the launch of a satellite.
Three years later, the first unmanned vessel is expected to land on the lunar surface.
No one in China is prepared to talk openly of a space race -- not least because Beijing still has a long way to go to catch up with Japan's financial and technical clout.
Beijing is also keen to stress the peaceful nature of its space program, despite suspicions in Washington that it is being developed for military purposes.
Whatever the objective, China has made rapid gains. Since its first satellite -- which broadcast the communist anthem, The East is Red -- was put into space in 1970, it has made 70 successful launches, most of them in recent years.
In January, Sun Laiyan (
Japan's relatively new space program has had mixed results. Before last month, three of 13 previous rocket launches had failed.
Observers say that JAXA officials will need several more successful launches under their belt before they can banish the nightmare of 15 months ago.
Some say the country is dreaming of Moon landings when it can least afford them.
Its US$2 billion annual space budget outstrips China's, but it is still tiny compared with the US' US$16.2 billion.
Last weekend's project cost ¥9.4 billion (US$89.4 million), compared with the international launch average of ¥7 billion.
Cooperation between Japan and China is rarely discussed, but it remains an option.
Inatani said Japan was watching China's space program "not closely, but carefully."
Beijing will be reciprocating over the next 12 months, during which time Tokyo is expected to launch three more H-2A rockets, one with two surveillance satellites on board capable of spying on North Korea -- and China.
For Japan, at least, failure is not an option.
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