Sounds like good news

Speaking at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs yesterday, China's National Space Agency Vice-Administrator, Luo Ge, told participants that his country's planned 2017 lunar mission will be robotic.

Previous reports had indicated that China had set a goal of a manned landing on the Moon that year.

China's plans are apparently ambitious, nonetheless. Luo said that it plans to orbit its own manned space station by 2015, with a manned landing on the Moon under consideration sometime later.

The unmanned 2017 mission will be aimed at returning lunar soil samples to Earth.

China has developed 12 launch vehicles for various purposes, he said. He also announced plans to launch about one hundred satellites in the next five to eight years.

Maybe the United States will have time to make "Race to the Moon- Part Deux" competitive after all.