Where's A Traffic Cop When You Need One?

The monopoly on space exploration, held so long by the United States and Russia, is a thing of the past. The European Union has two spacecraft en route to Mars already, taking advantage of the red planet's closest approach to Earth in almost 60,000 years. Now, the EU is expected to launch its first-ever lunar probe from the spaceport in French Guiana sometime around the end of September.

A final announcement on the date is expected next week. The European Space Agency (ESA) said the SMART-1 probe was supposed to have launched Thursday. But that was pushed back at the request of the probe's co-passenger aboard the Ariane-5 booster, a commercial satellite consortium.

The SMART-1 mission is designed to scour the lunar surface for clues to two mysteries: is there water on the moon and how did Earth's closest celestial neighbor get there in the first place? SMART-1 will need 16 months to get to the moon.

East Asian Space Race

As if there wasn't enough iron flying around up there already, both China and sometime military rival India are locked in a race to the moon. At the Paris Air Show earlier this year, Liu Youguang, general manager of the space department at China's Great Wall Industry Corp, said, "China's maiden manned space flight will be launched by the end of the year." That's a heady promise, given that there are only four more months until New Year's.

South Korea and even Taiwan have announced plans to develop space programs. China now says it'll launch a mission to Mars by the year 2020.

FMI: www.esa.int, www.cnsa.gov.cn, www.isro.org, http://satrec.kaist.ac.kr/english/SaTReC.html, www.fas.org/spp/guide/taiwan/agency