Jun 6, 2022
How China plans to become the next big space power
China is only the third country in history to have put both astronauts into space and to build a space station, after the Soviet Union and the US.It has big ambitions for Tiangong and hopes it will replace the International Space Station, which is due to be decommissioned in 2031.Chinese astronauts are excluded from the ISS because US law bans its space agency, Nasa, from sharing its data with China. As China expands its role in space, several other countries are also aiming to get to the Moon.Nasa plans to return to the Moon with astronauts from the US and other countries from 2025 onwards and has already rolled its new giant SLS rocket at the Kennedy Space Center,. India has launched its second major Moon mission already and wants to have its own space station by 2030.The UN Outer Space Treaty of 1967 says nowhere in space can be claimed by any one nation. Lucinda King, space project manager at Portsmouth University, says China is not just focussing on high-profile space missions: "They are prolific in all aspects of space. They have the political motivation and the resources to fund their planned programmes." Prof Sa'id Mosteshar, director of the London Institute of Space Policy and Law at the University of London, says it probably would not pay for China to send repeated mining missions to the Moon.Instead, he says China's space programme is driven more by a desire to impress the rest of the world.
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