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Photo: Getty Images
In February, an unmanned spacecraft from China and the United States is expected to reach Mars, where the two will send rovers to the icy surface, offering dueling images of its barren landscapes. It will likely take a decade or more for humans to travel the planet, but both countries want to acquire the expertise to dominate what lies beyond our atmosphere, along with China. aimed at catching up with – or surpassing – the United States, which has made eight successful Mars landings since 1976. “Mars has assumed the symbolic role of demonstrating the superiority of technology,” says Alice Gorman, associate professor at Flinders University of ‘Adelaide, Australia, specializing in space archeology.
Their competition is also heating up closer to home, as space takes more and more economic and military importance. NASA is working on plans to return astronauts on the moon during this decade, and China is preparing an unmanned lunar mission for 2023 with a view to a possible trip there by its astronauts. This would follow a 2019 visit which, for the first time, sent an investigation to the far side of the moon, as well as the Chang’e-5 mission, which returned to Earth in December with samples of the moon’s surface, which only the United States and the Soviet Union had done before.
From NASA Curiosity vagabond.
Source: NASA
China has been largely excluded from global initiatives such as the International Space Station because the US Congress ten years ago banned NASA from cooperating with Chinese groups. This prompted China to build its own space station, the first elements of which should be launched by this summer. U.S. restrictions haven’t stopped China from forming satellite partnerships with France, Italy and Brazil, and this year the Asian country aims to sign more for its lunar projects – both to secure additional funding and to build national pride. “Every successful space mission is a tribute to Chairman Mao and the old revolutionaries,” Chinese astronaut Zhang Xiaoguang said in a December speech at a museum dedicated to Mao Zedong.
Dozens of private space companies have also sprung up. Galaxy Space, a startup backed by a billionaire Lei Jun, operates China’s first low-earth orbit 5G broadband satellite, launched last year, and the company plans a factory capable of producing up to 500 satellites per year. This effort is one of several Chinese initiatives to establish a competitor of Starlink, Elon Musk’s network project of tens of thousands of low-flying satellites to provide broadband access. Chinese systems will likely be put into orbit by companies such as Galactic Space, which in November became the second Chinese company to launch a satellite. The first, ISpace, raised 1.2 billion yuan ($ 185 million) in August from investors led by Sequoia Capital China.
With the prospect of moon mining turning from sci-fi to a solvable logistical challenge, NASA in 2020 unveiled the Artemis Accords, an international agreement allowing countries or companies to establish exclusive zones on the moon. China did not sign and the Global Times, an official spokesperson for the Communist Party, denounced the agreements as reinforcing an “American political program of lunar colonization”.
President Biden will have to choose whether to confront China over its space initiatives or find ways to ease tensions and even increase collaboration. Wendy Whitman Cobb, associate professor at the U.S. Air Force’s School of Advanced Air and Space Studies in Montgomery, Alabama, says there is precedent for countries putting aside Earth-related spatial differences – especially the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission during the Cold War of 1975. “I don’t think cooperation with China is impossible,” she said. “History tells us it can be done.”
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