China Unveils Ambitious Plan For Space Exploration
By: Big 2 News Staff
Updated: December 30, 2011
China plans to put
laboratories in space, collect samples from the moon and prepare to
build
space stations over the next five years, according to an ambitious plan
released this week aimed at putting the country on the global map for
space exploration.
China also plans to launch manned-vessels
and freighters into space during the coming half-decade, according
to a government white paper. The country's eventual goal in the longer
term is a manned lunar landing.
"With economic progress, also comes the
need for scientific development and exploration," said Jiao Weixin,
a professor at the School of Earth and Space Sciences at Beijing
University. "By investing in space exploration, China wants to
contribute and be a major player in the world on more than one level."
The Chinese plans announced this week
come as the United States has been scaling back its ambitions and
funding for space exploration.
Since 2003, China has made major
breakthroughs in its space program, including becoming the third country
after Russia and the United States to put a human in space. It
successfully completed a spacewalk in 2008.
In November, the successful automated
docking and return of an unmanned spacecraft, Shenzhou-8, paved
the way for the creation of China's future space laboratory. The
spaceship blasted off from a launch facility in the Gobi Desert in
northwest China, one month after the first space laboratory module
Tiangong-1 was launched into space.
China says its military-run space program
will be used for peaceful purposes. But its activities have
set off controversy in the past, like when it shot down one of its dead
satellites in 2007, for example. That move alarmed some officials in the
United States and other countries and raised concerns about the
militarization of the space race.
Some experts say a critical gap in
Chinese-U.S. space relations is the absence of regularized talks on
space security, which took place between Washington and Moscow during
the Cold War.
"In this regard, the Obama
administration has made overtures at the military-to-military level,"
Clay
Moltz, an professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at
the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, Calif., said in an e-mail
response. "The ball is now in China's court to respond. How it responds
may say a lot about its true intentions in space."
Two more space docking missions are
planned for 2012, with at least one of them manned. But despite the
progress, some experts say China still has a long way to go in
developing its space technology.
"China is still catching up to countries
that began their space programs in the 1960s," said Jiao. "It
may be impressive to see what China has done in the past decade, but
there is still a long way to go."
The paper also says China will develop
technology to monitor space debris, study black holes and develop
small satellites for environmental and disaster monitoring and
forecasting.
