Summary Following are key dates this year highlighting Asia's involvement in space:
(AFP) - January 30: South Korea joins the space club, placing its first satellite in orbit aboard a 140-tonne rocket, the Korea Space Launch Vehicle, KSLV-1. North Korea launched its own satellite on December 12 2012.
June 26: China s Shenzhou-10 spaceship, with three crew, returns to Earth after a 15-day trip. The craft docked with China s orbiting space module, Tiangong-1, in tests designed to pave the way to a 60-tonne permanent space station by 2020. China also announces plans to launch a space lab, Tiangong-2, around 2015.
August 3: Japan launches H-2B rocket carrying a small humanoid robot as a companion for crew of the International Space Station.
September 14: Japan launches a new three-stage solid-fuelled rocket, Epsilon, designed for small payloads. Deploys SPRINT-A, an orbital telescope designed for observing Venus, Mars, Jupiter and other planets of our Solar System.
October 23: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) says it has tested a gun designed to find out more about the structure of asteroid. The gun, launched from probe Hayabusa-2 in 2018, will fire a metal slug into a space rock called 1999 JU3.
November 5: India launches its first mission to Mars, a low-cost unmanned probe called Mars Orbiter, or Mangalyaan. The gold-coloured probe, the size of a small car, will aim to detect methane, a possible signature of life, in the Red Planet s atmosphere.
December 2: China launches its first moon rover, Yutu, aboard a Long March-3B rocket.
