Asia's biggest economy this month successfully launched Kaguya (or Selene), its first lunar orbiter, stealing a march over China and India which are planning unmanned missions of their own to the moon.

Japan's next mission in 2012 will aim at landing a robot on the moon's surface, followed by one in 2018 that will seek to return successfully to earth, said Manabu Kato, chief scientist overseeing the Kaguya project.

"We are also discussing human exploration but we expect international collaboration" in a manned mission, Kato told reporters on the sidelines of a global space conference in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad.

Human exploration could be followed by human colonies on the moon, he said.

Cooperation between nations for lunar exploration should be modelled on the international space station, he said.

The space station is a research laboratory being assembled in orbit by the US, Canada, Russia, Japan and Europe.

The world's space agencies are discussing missions to the moon and even to Mars at a five-day conference in Hyderabad ending Friday, amid a renewed surge of interest in space exploration.

China plans to launch a moon orbiter before the end of this year and India in March or April 2008.

Both also plan human exploration of the moon to exploit lunar resources such as Helium 3, a gas seen by some experts as a solution to the earth's energy shortages.

China said Wednesday that it aims to send people to "stay and live long term" on the moon after 2020.

Japanese scientist Kato said a window of opportunity for a manned moon mission may not open for Japan until after 2020 given the US is expected to return to the lunar surface around 2018 for the first time since the 1970s.

"Maybe we can cooperate with China and India but we need to discuss much more," Kato said, cautioning against excessive expectations that the moon contains ample resources for exploitation.

Even if resources are available, there may be no way to access or exploit them, he said.

The one-year lunar mission Japan launched on September 14 is the most extensive since the US Apollo programme put the first -- and the last -- astronaut on the moon.

The explorer is named "Kaguya" after a beautiful princess who charms many men before ascending to her home, the moon, in a popular Japanese folk tale.

It will beam high-definition television images of the moon for the first time, Kato said.

The 55-billion-yen (478-million-dollar) probe consisted of a main unit, which will orbit 100 kilometres (60 miles) above the moon, and two small satellites.

It will gather data on the distribution of chemical elements and minerals.

The probe aims to study moon's gravity and environment while searching for hydrogen, which is required to make water.

"We just finished the first check-out of science systems to confirm their health," Kato said of the device.

Japan also plans to send probes to Mercury, Venus and Jupiter and cooperate with the European Space Agency in a Mars mission.

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