…While China Shoots for the Moon and Membership of Earth’s Most Elite Club

By Adam Durchslag, The Business, London

Apr. 9–China is planning to land on the moon by 2012 in audacious plans unveiled last week in Washington DC at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

Reports from China’s state-controlled Xinhua press agency said China was planning unmanned missions to fly around the moon in 2007 and to land in 2012. A manned moon landing is not planned, but it has not been ruled out.

Luo Ge, the number two at China’s National Space Administration, revealed last week in the US the true extent of China’s plans.

China has averaged 10 percent annual growth over the past few years, which is helping to push it toward superpower status in probably 10 years. As it was for the US and Soviet Union during the Cold War, mastering the final frontier is a matter of national pride for China.

Beijing is spending at least $500m (£287m, E414m) a year on its space programme, but the figure is likely to be larger when currency conversions and labour costs are taken into consideration.

US space agency Nasa wants to spend almost $17bn on its programme in 2007, which also involves planning for manned missions back to the moon as well as to Mars.

Since 2003, China has put its first two men into space, while Nasa has taken a step back in its space shuttle programme after the Columbia accident in 2003.

China is intending to launch about 80 satellites in the next eight years but, according to Luo, none will be for military purposes, although the US Department of Defence believes otherwise. A lot of these satellites will be cost-effective microsatellites, such as China’s Beijing-1, launched in 2005 and built in the UK by the University of Surrey’s Surrey Satellite Technology.

While China is investing E200m in Europe’s Galileo satellite global positioning system to rival that of the US, no similar co-operation exists between China and the US.

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