by The escalating rivalry between the two most powerful countries in the world that has spread throughout the world in recent years, is beyond the earth, into the realms of heaven.
As China leans heavily on strategic competition with the US – and moves toward all-out warfare with other regional neighbors – Washington’s alarm about the pace of its progress in space continues to grow.
Beijing has made no secret of its ambitions and recent successful space missions have shown that technological advances are backing up the government’s rhetoric.
Related: ‘We’re in a space race’: NASA takes umbrage at Chinese designs on the moon
On Friday, China launched a robotic spacecraft on a round trip to the far side of the moon, in a technically demanding mission that will pave the way for the first Chinese crew landing and a base on the lunar south pole. The Chang’e-6 aims to return samples of the lunar surface with a permanent face from Earth.
Earlier this week the Shenzhou-18, Beijing’s latest manned spacecraft mission was launched to the Tiangong space station, which was developed after China was excluded from the International Space Station.
In addition to the three taikonauts, there was a live fish called “the fourth crew member”, among the crew. The zebrafish is part of an experiment to test the viability of a large closed ecosystem, which includes fish and algae, to help humans survive in space for long periods of time.
But the collection of lunar samples and the viability of zebrafish are not the only focus of China’s space sector.
The pace of China’s ambitions has drawn concern from the government’s main rival, the US, about Beijing’s geopolitical intentions amid what the head of NASA has called a new “space race”.
Last week the head of NASA, Bill Nelson, said that the US and China were “really, in a race” to return to the moon, and he feared that China was trying to take territorial claims.
“We believe that a lot of their so-called civilian space program is a military program,” he told US lawmakers.
There are concerns about China’s development of anti-space weapons, including missiles that can target satellites, and spacecraft that can pull satellites out of orbit.
“On a geopolitical level, China’s space ambitions raise questions about how it could leverage its space capabilities to advance its regional and domestic political and military interests,” says Dr. Svetla Ben-Itzhak, deputy director on the Johns Hopkins University Western Space Scholars Program.
Gen Stephen Whiting of the US Space Command told reporters last week that China’s progress was “worrying”, noting that the number of spy satellites in orbit had tripled in the past six years.
‘It’s the wild, wild west’
The United States and China are indeed in a race, says Professor Kazuto Suzuki, from the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo, but it is not just about putting feet on the moon as it was during the cold war. Rather, it is to find and control resources, such as water.
“It is a race of people with better technical abilities. China is catching up fast. The threat factor is China’s speed of technological development [to the US],” he says.
Suzuki says that international agreements do not allow for national appropriation of resources on the moon, but in reality “it’s the wild, wild west”.
“Generally China wants to be first so that they have the right to dominate and monopolize the resources. If you have the resources in hand, you will have a huge advantage in future space exploration.”
The US and China are leading the development of a separate space station program for the moon. The US-led Artemis program includes plans for a “Moongate”, a station orbiting the moon as a communications hub and accommodation for astronauts, and a science laboratory.
The Americans, however, are not so interested in owning the moon because they were there”, says Suzuki.
“They know it’s not really a habitable place, they’re more interested in Mars. So for them the Moongate is a kind of gas station for the trip to Mars.” If the Artemis program can source water from the moon, it could be processed to create rocket fuel from hydrogen and oxygen.
In contrast, China and Russia announced joint plans in 2021 to build a shared research station on the lunar surface. The International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) would be open to any interested international parties they said. The US is unlikely to be among them, however, given its poor relations with China and Russia.
Suzuki says the station between China and Russia “is to be the research station in Antarctica”, which is within the rules of international space treaties. “But if it turns out to be a station to establish their territorial claims, that’s against the rules.”
The United States is gathering allies to ensure that China does not win the space race. Earlier this month, after China announced its intention to land a man on the moon, US leader Joe Biden and his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida promised an astronaut from Japan – China’s historic rival – will be sent to the moon on NASA’s Artemis missions in 2028. and again in 2032.
But China is also gathering allies. It has partnerships or financial commitments in projects across the Middle East and Latin America, and around a dozen international members of its ILRS.
But Ben-Itzhak notes that there are some overlapping memberships. Also “neither bloc has so far initiated exclusionary practices, which is promising”.
Ben-Itzhak says the US and China are indeed in a race, but the term does not fully capture “the complex, nuanced dynamics unfolding in the space right now, in terms of the diverse and growing number of actors and initiatives , and there is no clear. end goal in sight”.
“The real challenge in space is not about reaching a specific milestone, such as planting flags or collecting rocks; It is about establishing a sustainable, resilient presence in an extremely challenging environment. This is a test against our own abilities.”
Additional research by Chi Hui Lin
