by WENCHANG SPACE LAUNCH SITE, China – China launched an unmanned lunar spacecraft on Friday in a similar mission to bring back samples from the far side of the moon, the latest step in a rapidly advancing Chinese space program. encouraging competition. with the United States and others.
The Chang’e 6 took off on time at 5:27 pm local time (5:27 am ET) from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in Hainan province, the southern island of China.
The launch of the lunar probe, which NBC News was one of a handful of news organizations to attend, and the national excitement surrounding it, transformed the normally sleepy fishing village of Longlou into a major attraction. for tourists, as the crowds spill from tour buses and move on. to beaches and rooftops with the best views of the spaceport. One rooftop owner said he sold out 200 seats for 200 yuan (about $28) each.
The launch was preceded by a festival-like atmosphere on the beach, where vendors offered space paraphernalia and groups of children sold Chinese flags for 3 yuan (about 40 cents) each. Families sprawled on picnic blankets playing cards, while others set up hammocks between palm trees so they could stay in the limited shade.
Yiuwah Ng, a 28-year-old real estate office worker from the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai, traveled six hours by car and another three hours by ferry to find the best spot on the waterfront, where he camped for three days. with his friends and his dog.
“I want to see this historic moment,” he said of the launch, his fourth. “It is an important step for China’s lunar exploration.”
Max Zhang, a self-described “rocket chaser” from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, has been photographing launches at Wenchang from the beach since 2011.
“I’m addicted to the shock of seeing the launches, especially the sound of the rocket flame,” he said. “It shakes my heart.”
‘A force to be reckoned with’
If successful, the Chang’e mission will be a critical step in achieving the country’s goals of landing Chinese astronauts on the moon by 2030 and eventually building a base on the lunar surface.
The outcome of the mission will also have implications far beyond China’s borders. A handful of spaceship nations, including Russia, India, Japan and the United States, have also landed on the moon, creating what some experts have compared to a new kind of space race.
“China wants to prove that it is a force, so China is always competing against everyone in space,” said Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic Studies and International in Washington. .
A successful Chang’e 6 mission would show how sophisticated China’s lunar exploration program has become in a short period of time.
“Twenty-five years ago, they had very basic space capabilities,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based public policy think tank. “Going from that to where they are today – they’ve clearly surpassed Russia and their space capabilities are second to none in the United States.”
China achieved its first lunar landing in 2013 with the Chang’e 3 mission, which placed a lander and rover on the lunar surface to study the lunar terrain. Before that, only the United States and the former Soviet Union had successfully landed spacecraft on the moon.
In 2019, China achieved another historic milestone with its Chang’e 4 flight, becoming the first country to land a probe on the far side of the moon, the part permanently facing Earth.
The following year, in 2020, China returned to the side of the moon, which always faces Earth, landing the Chang’e 5 spacecraft on a volcanic plain called Oceanus Procellarum. The probe then retrieved samples and brought them back to Earth, marking a major technological advance.
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) invited scientists from the US, Europe and Asia to apply to borrow the lunar samples for their own research, holding a field meeting last week in the Chinese city of Wuhan. NASA-funded researchers have received rare permission from Congress to submit proposals, raising the possibility of high-level space cooperation between the United States and China that is otherwise prohibited by US law.
This time, the Chang’e 6 spacecraft aims to land and retrieve samples from the South Pole-Aitken basin, an ancient and sprawling impact crater on the far side of the moon.
Conducting a sample return mission from the side of the moon that is always away from Earth is challenging because mission controllers on the ground have no way to directly contact a spacecraft in that region. Instead, signals must be sent via a satellite now in lunar orbit that China launched from the same location in Hainan last month.
Although difficult, the effort could have huge payoffs. Studies suggest that the near side of the moon was more volcanically active than the far side, meaning that all the lunar samples found so far only tell part of the story of the moon’s origin and evolution.
Collecting lunar samples from different geologic eras and regions is very valuable “and it is significant for all mankind to have a more comprehensive understanding of the moon and even the origin of the solar system,” Ge Ping, mission leader from Exploration and CNSA Lunar Space. Engineering Center, told reporters in Hainan on Thursday.
Beyond its scientific objectives, there are geopolitical questions attached to the Chang’e-6 mission. The flight is a precursor to a pair of Chinese robotic missions to the moon’s south pole to find places to build a lunar base. Last year, the Chinese and Russian space agencies agreed to jointly build a research station on the surface of the moon.
NASA and its commercial partners aim to establish a permanent presence at the moon’s south pole, though numerous delays and budget overruns have plagued the agency’s Artemis moon missions. American astronauts are returning to the lunar surface in 2026 at the earliest in the current timeline.
With China and Russia in a rival coalition, there is some pressure on the United States to keep its foot on the accelerator, Harrison said.
“It doesn’t matter who gets there first, and it matters how you get there and what kind of coalition you’re bringing with you,” he said.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has warned many times that the United States is in danger of collapsing with China’s lunar ambitions. In an interview this week with Yahoo Finance, Nelson outlined what is at stake in the new space race.
“I think it’s no more than China suddenly saying, ‘We’re here. You stay out,’” he said.
When asked about international competition in space on Thursday, Ge said, “Every country in the world should explore, develop and use outer space peacefully.”
“There’s no need to worry too much,” he said. “There are space programs for everyone.”
As more countries around the world expand space capabilities, NASA is pushing for more global cooperation, establishing the Artemis Alliance in 2020 to promote peaceful, responsible and sustainable practices. US law prevents China from joining the other 39 nations that have signed the agreements, which both China and Russia have criticized as a tool to advance US dominance in space.
Many Western space policy experts have raised concerns about China’s and Russia’s intentions. The full scope of China’s ambitions in space, for example, is unknown because its space agency does not operate with the same level of transparency as NASA. The country’s space program is more closely related to the military than it is in the US
“We can never say that China’s investment in civilian space technologies is only civilian and will not be used for military purposes,” said Namrata Goswami, a professor at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management and co-author of the 2020 book. “Scramble for the Sky: The Great Power Contest to Control the Resources of Outer Space.”
While it may feel as if China’s spaceflight objectives have accelerated in recent years, they are part of a decades-long strategy, Goswami said.
“Many of the leaders of China’s space program announced these goals and timelines 20 years ago,” she said. “What’s amazing to me is that they’ve met almost every milestone on time, and for them, it’s a strategic advantage in the global story of who’s doing it better.”
As much as the moon and its resources can inspire competition among nations, space exploration can also be unifying, Swope said.
“We are literally a speck in the universe, and when we go to the moon or explore space, we have that shared human characteristic as a human race where we want to understand the unknown and we want to find out,” he said. “That transcends politics.”
Janis Mackey Frayer reported from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China, and Denise Chow reported from New York.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
