An Asian Moon race?

After a gap of 40 years, the Moon is again the focus of several countries’ space ambitions. Japan, China and India have already launched their first Moon missions and are expected to send humans moonwards within the next 10–15 years. This revival of lunar programmes in the post-cold war era goes beyond symbolism and is also about the race to grab the natural resources of the Moon. Such ambitious missions by these states imply that they intend to change the unipolar world into one with multiple power centres, and would use space technology as one of the components to do so. This paper examines the first phase Moon missions of the Asian states and argues that their overall deep space mission aspirations have strategic ambitions attached.