From Reuters:
A top official in China’s space program has set 2024 for the country’s first moonwalk, a Hong Kong newspaper reported on Monday, cementing its position as a new space power.
China has come a long way since then paramount leader Mao Zedong lamented in 1957 — the year the Soviet Union put the first ever man-made object into orbit — that the country was incapable even of putting a potato into space.
In 2003, China became only the third country — after the United States and Soviet Union — to launch a man into space aboard its own rocket. Last October, it sent two men into orbit. [Full Text]
See also China Plans To Land On Moon By 2024 by CBS NEWS.
