China plans to land astronauts on the moon before 2030, which can be one other advance in what’s increasingly seen as a recent space race.
The US goals to place astronauts back on the lunar surface by the tip of 2025.
Deputy Director of the Chinese Manned Space Agency Lin Xiqiang confirmed China’s goal at a news conference Monday but gave no specific date.
Lin also said China plans to expand its orbiting crewed space station with an extra module.
A recent three-person crew is scheduled to move to the Tiangong station on Tuesday aboard the Shenzhou 16 craft and can overlap briefly with the three astronauts already aboard.
The fresh crew features a civilian for the primary time. All previous crew members have been within the People’s Liberation Army, the military wing of the country’s ruling Communist Party.
Gui Haichao, a professor at Beijing’s top aerospace research institute, will join mission commander Jing Haipeng and spacecraft engineer Zhu Yangzhu because the payload expert.
China accomplished the Tiangong space station in November with the third of three modules, centered on the Tianhe living and command module.
China’s first manned space mission in 2003 made it the third country after the previous Soviet Union and the US to place an individual into space.
China built its own station after it was excluded from the International Space Station, largely as a result of US objections over the Chinese space programs’ intimate ties to the PLA.
Space is increasingly seen as a recent area of competition between China and the US — the world’s two largest economies and rivals for diplomatic and military influence.
The astronauts NASA sends to the moon by the tip of 2025 will aim for the south pole where permanently shadowed craters are believed to be filled with frozen water.
Plans for everlasting crewed bases on the moon are also being considered by each countries, raising questions on rights and interests on the lunar surface.
US law tightly restricts cooperation between the 2 countries’ space programs and while China says it welcomes foreign collaborations, those have to this point been limited to scientific research.
Along with their lunar programs, the US and China have also landed rovers on Mars and Beijing plans to follow the US in landing a spacecraft on an asteroid.
