Photo: Getty Images
In February unmanned spacecraft from China and The US is scheduled to reach Mars, where both will send rovers on the frozen surface, providing dueling images of its barren landscapes. It will probably be a decade or more before anyone travels the planet, but both countries want to gain the expertise needed to dominate what lies beyond our atmosphere with China. which aims to reach – or surpass – the US, which has made eight successful landings on Mars since 1976. “Mars has moved into the symbolic role of demonstrating the superiority of technology,” says Alice Gorman, an associate professor at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, specializing in space archeology.
Their competition heats up even closer to home, as the space gets bigger economic and military importance. NASA is working on plans to return the astronauts to the moon sometime in this decade, and China is preparing an unmanned monthly mission for 2023 in preparation for a possible trip there for his astronauts. This would follow a visit in 2019 that sent a probe to for the first time the far side of the moon as well Chang’e-5 mission, which returned to Earth in December surface tests, something only the United States and the Soviet Union had done before.
GODMOTHER Curiosity rover.
Source: NASA
China has been largely excluded from global initiatives, such as the International Space Station, because the US Congress a decade ago banned NASA from cooperating with Chinese groups. That stimulated China to build own space station, the first elements of which are scheduled to be launched by this summer. US restrictions have not prevented China from forming satellite partnerships with France, Italy and Brazil, and this year the Asian country aims to sign up for its monthly projects – both to provide additional funding and to increase national pride. “Every successful space mission is a tribute to President 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 enterprises have also emerged. Galaxy Space, a billionaire-backed startup Lei Jun is operating the first 5G broadband satellite in Earth orbit, launched last year, and the company plans a factory capable of producing up to 500 satellites annually. This effort is one of several Chinese initiatives aimed at establishing a competitor to Starlink, By Elon Musk proposed network of tens of thousands of low-flying satellites to provide broadband access. China’s systems will likely be put into orbit by outfits 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) from investors led by Sequoia Capital China in August.
With the prospect of mining on the moon, moving from science fiction to a solvable logistical challenge, NASA has revealed in 2020 The Artemis Agreements, an international agreement that allows countries or companies to establish exclusive zones on the Moon. China did not connect again Global Times, an official spokesman for the Communist Party, denounced the agreements as strengthening the “political agenda of the monthly colonization” of the United States.
President Biden will have to choose whether to confront China with its space initiatives or find ways to ease tensions and even increase cooperation. Wendy Whitman Cobb, an associate professor at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies of the U.S. Air Force in Montgomery, Alabama, says there is a precedent for countries that put aside Earth-to-space differences – especially the common Apollo-Soyuz mission in cold weather. The war of 1975. “I don’t think cooperation with China is impossible,” she says. “History tells us it can be done.”
Read more: China loves Elon Musk and Tesla. How long will this take?