President Obama’s decision in 2010 to cut NASA’s budget and abandon the Constellation program, established by the Bush administration, which was charged with returning Americans to the moon by 2020 and creating an “extended human presence on the moon,” has created a vacuum, which China will attempt to fill. China has announced an ambitious five-year plan that includes the launch of space laboratories, a manned spaceship to the moon and the creation of its own global satellite navigation system that will almost certainly be used for military purposes.

The announcement comes six months after the United States ended the Space Shuttle program, leaving Russia and China as the only countries now capable of sending humans into space.