Photo: Getty Images
In February of unmanned spacecraft of China i the United States is expected to reach Mars, where both will send rovers to the icy surface, offering duelable images of their barren landscapes. It will probably be a decade or more before any human being travels to the planet, but both countries want to gain the experience needed to dominate what is beyond our atmosphere, with China. with the goal of catching up or surpassing the United States, which has landed eight landings on Mars since 1976. “Mars has shifted to 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.
Your competition also heats up closer to home, as space takes up more space economic and military importance. NASA is working on plans to return astronauts to the moon sometime in this decade, and China is preparing an unmanned mole mission for 2023 in preparation for a possible trip there for its astronauts. This would continue with a 2019 visit that first sent an investigation to the far side of the moon, as well as the Chang’e-5 mission, which returned to Earth in December carrying samples of the lunar surface, something only the United States and the Soviet Union had done before.
From NASA Curiosity rover.
Source: NASA
China has been largely excluded from global initiatives such as the International Space Station because the U.S. Congress a decade ago banned NASA’s cooperation with Chinese groups. This spurred China to build its own space station, the first elements of which are scheduled to be launched this summer. US restrictions have not prevented China from forming satellite partnerships with France, Italy and Brazil, and this year the Asian country intends to enroll others for its lunar projects, both to secure additional funding and to increase national pride. “All successful space missions are 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 companies have also emerged. Galaxy Space, a startup backed by a billionaire Lei Jun, which operates China’s first low-orbit Earth 5G broadband satellite, 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 Starlink competitor, Elon Musk’s network proposal of tens of thousands of low-flying satellites to provide broadband access. China’s systems will likely be put into orbit by teams like Galactic Space, which in November became the second Chinese company to launch a satellite. The first, ISpace, raised 1.2 billion yuan ($ 185 million) in August from investors led by Sequoia Capital China.
With the prospect of mining on the moon moving from science fiction to a solvable logistical challenge, NASA unveiled in 2020 the Artemis Accords, an international agreement that allows countries or companies to establish exclusive zones on the Moon. China did not log in and the Global Times, an official spokesman for the Communist Party, denounced the agreements as reinforcing a “political agenda for lunar colonization.”
President Biden will have to choose whether to confront China in its space initiatives or look for ways to ease tensions and even increase cooperation. Wendy Whitman Cobb, an associate professor at the U.S. Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies in Montgomery, Alabama, says there are precedents for countries that set aside space differences linked to Earth, in particular the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission during the Cold War of 1975. “I don’t think cooperation with China is impossible,” he says. “History tells us it can be done.”
Read below: China loves Elon Musk and Tesla. How long will this last?