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The moon's the limit for
China
By Antoine Blua
The successful landing
of the US space shuttle Discovery at the end
of a two-week mission has confirmed the
United States' leading position in space technology and
space exploration. The US space agency NASA has now launched an unmanned
spacecraft to Mars to study whether the planet
once had sufficient water to nurture life. Russia
is the other traditional space power. But other
countries are actively developing national space
programs. Most notably, China is speeding up
development of its technology in a drive to keep
up with the world's major space powers.
Since China formally launched its space
program in the early 1990s, the national space
industry has grown dramatically. It now employs
tens of thousands of scientific, manufacturing and
planning personnel in some 3,000 work centers.
Space missions have become a focus for
boosting national prestige and a showcase for
China's technological capabilities, according to
David Baker, editor of the annual reference book
Jane's Space Directory in Britain.
"China has realized that in order to be a
major player on the world stage it has to
demonstrate that it has a sound and strong
technical base," Baker told RFE/RL. "And the
desire to explore the moon is a part of China's
movement forward to demonstrate to nations that
they are capable of matching the achievements of
those nations that have always been considered to
be the dominant countries."
In 2003, China
propelled its first astronaut into space for a
21-hour flight around the Earth aboard a
spacecraft based on the Russian Soyuz capsule. The
country thus became the third country to have
placed a person in orbit, decades after the former
Soviet Union and the United States.
China's Research Institute of Space
Technology says the country plans to launch its
next manned space mission in early October, with
two astronauts circling the Earth for several
days.
Last year, China launched an
unmanned moon-exploration project, which includes
putting a satellite in orbit around the moon
before 2007, landing before 2010, and collecting
lunar soil samples before 2020.
Craig
Covault, senior editor for the US magazine
Aviation Week And Space Technology, told RFE/RL
that the moon project was one of the many fronts
where China's space technology program was making
rapid progress. "It is developing a whole new
range of large, modern rockets - boosters. It is
developing manned spacecraft for use in Earth
orbit to a small Chinese space laboratory that
will be operational in the next 10 years or so,"
he said. "And between now and then, [China is
planning] individual flights of the Shenzhou
spacecraft of a week or so in length. It is also
looking at developing a wide range of satellites
for Earth orbit."
On August 2, the
official Xinhua news agency reported that China
successfully launched its 21st return scientific
satellite, which will be used to carry out
scientific research, land surveying and mapping,
and experiments in outer space.
Covault
notes that communication and navigation are two
key areas of development that China is undertaking
in space. "It is developing its own navigation
capability, primarily to give Chinese military
air, sea and land forces a great autonomy and
precision in navigation," he told RFE/RL. "In the
area of communications, China is developing its
own autonomous communications-satellite capability
so it does not have to rely on US and
European-built systems."
However, Covault
added that China's space technology still lagged
behind the US, Europe and Japan. For instance, he
says Chinese manned spacecraft were comparable to
the Soyuz spacecraft that started to fly 30 years
ago. US and European communications satellites can
function in orbit for more than 10 years, while
Chinese ones remain operational for only five or
six years.
Baker told RFE/RL that China
could build the infrastructure for a "new and
vibrant" capability across all areas of space
technology if it cooperated with other nations.
"The biggest capability which the Chinese have had
so far is with their launch vehicles," he added.
"They have developed rocketry independent of other
countries. But that's merely the transportation
system. In order to do serious and big things in
space they need to develop other areas, and in
those areas they really are quite far behind."
China and Brazil have already been jointly
researching and developing Earth resource
satellites. China is also a partner of the
European Union in the development of Galileo, a
European version of the GPS navigation system now
in place in the United States.
Copyright (c) 2005, RFE/RL Inc.
Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW,
Washington DC 20036 |
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