China says US can’t stop it from making ‘giant strides’ in space

China’s methodical moves over the years to extend its reach from Earth’s orbit to the Moon and even Mars have worried U.S. officials, especially as NASA’s Artemis lunar program faces challenges. delays.

The country enjoys a “unique advantage through the system of mobilizing all resources nationally” to advance its space ambitions, China National Space Administration Vice Administrator Bian Zhigang said in a statement on Thursday. the first public comments from Beijing since the return.

Chinese officials have blamed a longstanding U.S. law that prohibits direct cooperation on space research for preventing the two powers from working together. But the U.S. position “cannot prohibit China from making giant leaps in its space program,” he said, noting that the project has allowed the country to hone key technological areas that would strengthen its space capabilities in the long term.

Bian’s remarks underscored Beijing’s ambitions to become a space superpower and scientific force as the United States’ main rival in space exploration, with plans to land Chinese astronauts on the lunar surface by 2030 and establish a base at the moon’s south pole. It created a new frontier in its vast rivalry with the United States, which also involves computer chips and solar panels.

Before the latest mission, China had already successfully landed an unmanned spacecraft on the far side of the Moon and brought back samples from the near side, but the Chang’e 6 mission combined the two.

The uncrewed Chang’e 6 mission took off on May 2 and landed on the far side of the Moon on June 2. She collected rocks and other materials near and around an impact crater called the Apollo Basin, which is part of the South Pole. -The Aitken Basin is the oldest, largest and deepest known crater on the Moon, Chinese officials announced Thursday.

A parachute carrying the returning Chang’e 6 plane landed at 2:07 p.m. local time on Tuesday in a designated desert area in Inner Mongolia, according to live broadcast on a Chinese state media channel. Engineers monitoring the landing applauded, the video shows.

The return craft carried about 2 kg of lunar soil samples, which were flown to Beijing for unpacking.

Bian invited researchers from around the world, including the United States, to request access to study the new samples.

The far side is the lunar hemisphere which always faces the Earth. It’s also called the “dark side,” not because of a lack of light, but because scientists know so little about this hemisphere.

The first samples from the far side of the Moon are “extremely exciting” and “could tell us a completely different geological story,” said Carsten Münker, a professor of geochemistry at the University of Cologne in Germany, who requested access to the samples collected by a previous researcher. Chinese lunar mission.

The Chinese mission covered sites “that have never been explored.” All American and Russian missions went to the central part,” Münker said.

Two parts of the samples will be stored permanently, while the rest will be distributed later to “scientists in China and foreign countries in accordance with lunar sample management regulations,” said Wang Qiong, deputy chief designer of the Chang mission. ‘e-6. said Wednesday on Chinese radio CRI News.

U.S. officials at NASA, the Pentagon and Congress are concerned about the continued progress of China’s space exploration because its civilian space program is directly linked to its military program and technologies developed by the space agency can be used to improve military capabilities.

Dual-use space technologies can help strengthen the country’s science and technology sector and modernize its military, according to the US Department of Defense. China’s progress in space can help its military develop missiles, lasers and robots that can be used for space combat, according to its 2023 report on the Chinese military.

But U.S. officials say that despite Beijing’s progress, the United States remains on track to return its astronauts to the lunar surface before China.

“I pointed out in my comments that we are in a space race with the Chinese and they are very good,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told the Washington Post in a recent interview. “Especially in the last 10 years, they’ve had a lot of success. They usually say what they mean and do what they say.

Research collaboration between the United States and China in space is rare. But after the Chang’e 5 mission returned to Earth in 2020, NASA urged its scientists to request access to the roughly four pounds of lunar soil and rocks it collected.

A long-standing U.S. law prohibits the use of NASA funds for projects with China or Chinese companies without congressional approval, due to concerns about the potential transfer of sensitive U.S. data or technology to China .

US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said he did not believe the Chinese were interested in cooperating with the United States on space research.

“I don’t think the Chinese have shown much interest in working with the United States” in space, Burns said at a Council on Foreign Relations event in December. “So in some ways it’s contested. It’s a contested area and we feel comfortable where we are.”

Even if American researchers had access to the most recent samples, it would take many years before they could study them.

International researchers waited three years to apply for access to samples from the previous mission, Chang’e 5, which landed and returned to Earth in 2020. Ten candidates were interviewed in April this year, and China has yet to announce its selection. Five of those candidates were American.

Samples from the latest mission could be “very different” from rocks collected on the near side of the Moon during previous missions, researchers say. Materials collected by Chang’e 6 on the far side are believed to be older samples that could help explain the Moon’s early history, experts say.

Kentaro Terada, a professor of planetary science at Osaka University who also requested samples from a previous Chinese mission, said “there is a strong possibility” that the far-side samples could contain records of the first moon and, hopefully, some Earth-like features from billions of years ago, something scientists have failed to find from previous samples from the near side.

“I’m looking forward to seeing the isotopic differences between the far side sample and the near side sample (of) Apollo,” Terada said, adding that some of Earth’s earliest elements may have been transported to the Moon by the winds and preserved in lunar space. floors.

The samples from the far side could be a “game changer,” said Frédéric Moynier, a French cosmochemist who requested Chinese lunar samples during a previous mission.

“It would be very important to test Chang’e 6 with samples from the far side,” Moynier said.