space.com: Over a few short months, Japan, China, and India will all have lunar probes orbiting the moon, sparking talk of a new space race in Asia.

China, for one, takes exception at that characterization. On Thursday, a top official in its secretive military-backed lunar explorer program defended the probe launched last week as an innovation that is part of a future wave of cooperation, not competition, in outer space.

"It's all peaceful,'' said Pei Zhaoyu, assistant director of the Lunar Exploration Program Center, when asked whether a space race was on. "The countries involved in lunar exploration are developing an understanding. They're evolving a mechanism for cooperation.''