China, only the third country to put a man in space aboard its own rocket, expects to launch a space station by 2020, state media said on Wednesday, the day its first lunar probe reached the moon.
The space station, the world's second, would be a "small-scale 20-tonne space workshop", the China Daily quoted Long Lehao, leading designer of Long March 3A, the launch vehicle for the lunar probe, as saying.
"It is the first time a timetable has been made public for the building of the first space station, the third and final step of the country's current manned space programme," Long told China Daily.
Chang'e 1, China's first lunar probe, entered its working orbit on Wednesday after a two-week journey to the moon, Xinhua news agency said. The orbit is the probe's final destination, where it is programmed to carry out scientific exploration work and stay on the job for at least a year.
Long said he was optimistic about the space station plan because China has made progress developing a new family of rocket launchers. The world's only operational space station is the 400-tonne International Space Station, a joint work of 16 nations including the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, Brazil and 11 countries from the European Space Agency.