China, Korea may become International Space Station partners

There's some news here today about the possibility of China (and Korea, though no detail is given there) possibly becoming a partner on the International Space Station. Having extra partners to reduce the financial burden on others is always welcome, though naturally the idea of a lunar program is much more exciting and after Japan's plans to create a robotic lunar base were revealed the idea struck me that this would be an area where Korea could easily contribute considering that they are also planning to send their first mission to the Moon in 2020.

In the meantime, the most exciting Chinese contribution to space this year will probably end up being Chang'e 2 which will launch sometime this year. When this year? Doesn't matter. Once again this is one of the huge advantages the Moon has compared to Mars, as missions can be launched when they are good and ready instead of racing to meet a launch window that only opens up every 780 days.