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The United States wants to send astronauts back to the Moon by 2020, but China could get there before them. Dr Michael Griffin told the BBC that China is now capable of sending a manned mission to the Moon within the next decade. Here's our science reporter Paul Rincon:

China has been working on its space programme since the 1970s but in 2003 it sent an astronaut into space, becoming only the third country to launch a person into orbit. Since then, the country's ambitions and capability have grown to the point where the US space agency now thinks China could put people on the Moon within the next decade, if it so wishes.

Dr Michael Griffin, who has been the head of NASA since 2005, told the BBC that China could achieve this milestone before the return mission planned by the United States for the year 2020. President George Bush announced the American Moon initiative in 2004, but Dr Griffin would not be drawn on whether it mattered if China got there before the United States. He even hinted that the two countries could collaborate on space projects in future.

Dr. Michael Griffin:
"I think we're always better off if we try to find arenas where we can collaborate rather than quarrel and I would remind your viewers that the first first US-Soviet human space co-operation took place in 1975 at virtually the height of the Cold War and it led in the end, you know, eighteen years later to discussions about an international space station programme in which we are involved together today."

Though China has given no timetable, some observers think a manned Moon mission is inevitable. Dr Griffin said humans needed to continue advancing the frontiers of space exploration, regardless of which countries made the breakthroughs.

Paul Rincon, BBC science reporter