A China-US space race is underway and it’s destination Moon

The gap in space capabilities vis-à-vis the US notwithstanding, China could piggy-back on past US and Russian expertise to leapfrog onto the lunar exploratory stage.

Look up on a clear night just after sunset, or before dawn, with your unaided eyes and you might see sunlight glinting off orbiting satellites as they steadily cross the sky like moving stars. One of these star-like objects would be the Chinese space station Tiangong (Divine Ship), in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The construction of the permanently crewed space station began in 2011 and was completed last year, and is expected to host yuhangyuans (Chinese astronauts) well past this decade. In fact, Tiangong would be the lone space station in LEO once the International Space Station (ISS) is decommissioned in 2030.

China's manned space programme gathered momentum in the late 1990s, thanks to a lot of help from the experienced Russians and bigger budgets from a Beijing eager not to fall far behind the West. Chinese space engineers did their homework in all fields related to human space flight — from docking techniques to setting up space structures — to enable the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) to routinely have in-orbit crew rotation exercises involving up to six yuhangyuans occupying Tiangong.

The latest mission to Tiangong, on May 30, including the first civilian yuhangyuan in the three-member crew was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert. These missions, reminiscent of the United States and Russian efforts in the early days of the ISS and other space stations, burnish China’s credentials as the third country to launch manned missions.

China’s ambitious space programme sees a Moon base as an immediate objective and all manned Chinese missions sent aloft are believed to be stepping stones enroute this. After the May 30 launch, Lin Xiqiang, Deputy Director of the CMSA, declared China’s intention to send a crewed lunar mission by 2030: a declaration that has added to speculation about a potential Sino-US race to the Moon. Earlier this year, in an interview with the Washington-based Politico, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson spoke of space rivalry between the US and China. He said China’s goal is nothing less than the domination of the most resource-rich sites on the Moon. “We better watch out that they don’t get to a place on the Moon under the guise of scientific research. And it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they say, ‘keep out, we’re here, this is our territory.”

China is aggressively building new launch pads — including a mobile sea platform in the Yellow Sea — that boast of launch facilities comparable to that of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Heavy lift launchers such as the Long March and the Tianlong 2, and the planned 13,000-satellite mega-constellation — to counter Starlink and OneWeb — all attest to the country’s rapidly expanding space capabilities. The Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA) has also launched several robotic landers and rovers to collect lunar samples and, in 2019, became the first to land a rover on the far side of the Moon.

Does this, as many observers believe, point to a Sino-US race with China fast catching up with the prime space-faring nation? The answer is probably ‘no’. Never mind the fact that the Pentagon itself, in a report published in August 2022, predicted that China would “surpass U.S. capabilities in space as early as 2045”. While there is no denying the expanding Chinese capabilities in space, NASA is unlikely to lose its ascendancy in space. The space budgets of the two countries alone suffice to underline this: China spends less than a third of the US, in spite of the CMSA having doubled its funds over the last five years. In terms of space assets like satellites, too, the US has a considerably big lead of over 65 per cent over China. Ditto for launch facilities, with US space-ports outnumbering the Chinese 20 to six.

The US also holds sway when it comes to international collaboration with the large number of countries (25) that have signed the US-led Artemis Accords (guidelines for exploring and utilising space resources). India is the latest to join the Artemis Accords, besides agreeing to a joint India-US mission to the ISS. This contrasts sharply with the handful of countries that have joined the proposed Sino-Russian International Lunar Research Station.

Yet, the yawning gap in space capabilities vis-à-vis the US notwithstanding, China could still piggy-back on past US and Russian expertise to leapfrog directly onto the lunar exploratory stage. Such a possibility is one of the reasons for US efforts to return humans to the lunar surface picking up speed. The Artemis I mission in December put an unmanned Orion spacecraft into lunar orbit and returned it to Earth, while Artemis II is a crewed lunar flyby mission next year, followed by Artemis III that is scheduled to put astronauts on the Moon again by 2025. NASA is counting on these missions to prepare the blueprint for the first lunar settlements ahead of China.

These developments, however, mean good news for the rest of the space-faring community, as returning to the Moon is the only way to get people all fired up about space again. This has already impacted the international space scene with projects like India’s unmanned Moon programme Chandrayaan 3 — due for launch next month — gaining fresh momentum.

(Prakash Chandra is former editor of the Indian Defence Review. He writes on aerospace and strategic affairs.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.