A ‘modern’ race to the Moon. With different stakes from the Cold War era, from the rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States when the objective was to claim the moral and technological dominance of a political system with a flag on lunar soil. Something that remains in the rivalry between China and the United States, but now – writes the Washington Post on the eve of the long-awaited meeting in the USA between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping – the two countries are working on a lasting presence on the Moon and in cislunar space. Getting there first “would be a source of pride for China,” Bill Nelson, NASA administrator, said in an interview. And, he added, “it is our intention that this does not happen.”
In August the other Asian giant, India, wrote history: the unmanned probe Chandrayaan-3 landed near the lunar South Pole. And India became the first country in the world to successfully bring a probe to that place considered the ‘new El Dorado’ thanks to the reserves of ice, and therefore water. A success that came after a failed attempt by Russia a few days earlier. There were also unsuccessful attempts by Israel and Japan.
“We want to be there to set a precedent for mining materials on the Moon,” said Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who raises the issue of “property rights,” among other things. And he says: “We want to do it in line with our values and our economic system and if China comes first it can set a precedent based on its values and its economic system.”
Since 2003, the Chinese space program has worked on a slow and steady series of missions which, the Post highlights, have pushed China to the top of space powers, with a space station located in low Earth orbit, continuously ‘inhabited’ , and the arrival of a rover on Mars in 2021. And the Moon has been the subject of particular interest. There were the lunar missions of 2007 and 2010 and then in 2013 the Chinese Chang’e-3 lander glided onto the surface of the Moon. 2019 is the year China ‘arrived’ on the ‘hidden side’ of the Moon and in 2020 brought soil samples collected on the Moon back to Earth.
In this century, the Post highlights, China has managed to successfully land on the lunar surface three times, while the United States remains at the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. According to Dean Cheng, consultant on the China program of the US Institute of Peace, the Asian giant “seems to want to clarify that it will be an important player, if not the main one, in defining norms and standards for future space activity”.
So the US created an international coalition. The development of the Artemis agreements, signed so far by 31 countries (including India, excluding China), a legal framework for the peaceful use of space that would regulate behavior on the lunar surface. In a context in which, the Post continues, NASA cannot collaborate with China on space missions for fear of technology theft.
“Today is not a race to the Moon – said Harrison of Csis – It’s a race to race. It’s how you get there, it’s about the partnerships put in place to get there and the precedents that are established. It’s different from years Sixties when it came to planting a flag. Now it’s more complicated, there’s a lot more at stake.” And if no country can claim sovereignty over the Moon, Beijing could say “we are not claiming territory, but this is an off limits area and no one can get here within a certain radius – warned Harrison – It would be an extension of what they did in the South China Sea.”
Last year, NASA successfully completed the Artemis I mission with the dispatch of the Orion spacecraft. Artemis II, the first crewed mission, is expected by the end of 2024 or early 2025. The timing for Artemis III, the first moon landing mission, is uncertain. However, NASA has a couple of robotic missions to the Moon planned for the next few months.
And China is not standing by. For next year he is working on the Chang’e-6 mission, back to the ‘hidden side’ of the Moon to collect samples to bring back to Earth. In 2026 Chang’e-7 should arrive near the lunar South Pole, as part of – concludes the Post – work to build a settlement that China calls the International Lunar Research Station.
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