China reaches for the stars

As blunders go, it was right up there – China’s first space laboratory module, sent into orbit to the sound of the patriotic US song America the Beautiful. State broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) gave no reason why its minute-long animation of the launch, on 29 September 2011, was accompanied by music from the song many Americans consider their unofficial national anthem.

Gaffe aside, the successful launch of the unmanned first stage of China’s planned Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) space station was an important achievement. Tiangong-1 will circle Earth for about a month before controllers attempt the first space dock with another craft, Shenzou-8. A female taikonaut (Chinese astronaut) might then be sent aloft to attempt a manual docking.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) hopes to complete the 60-tonne space station no later than 2020. By then, the 450-tonne International Space Station is scheduled to be decommissioned, which may leave China as the only nation with a permanent human presence in space.

The United States ended its shuttle programme in July 2011, after 30 years of missions that culminated in the building of the International Space Station. It now relies on Russian and European partners for logistical support and there is ongoing debate about the country’s long-term space objectives.

Against this background, China’s evolving space programme appears increasingly confident and focused. The flight into low-Earth orbit of the first taikonaut in 2003 propelled China into an elite club – only Russia and the US had previously flown manned space missions using domestic launch technology.

China has since carried out two more manned flights and in 2007, put the Chang-e 1 satellite into orbit around the moon on a two-year survey mission. In 2008, taikonaut Zhai Zhigang performed the country’s first spacewalk. Two years later, a probe photographed the lunar surface to identify possible landing sites. Next year a joint Chinese-Russian Mars probe is due to be launched.

China intends landing a lunar rover in 2017, and has often talked of establishing a permanent presence on the moon.

Detractors point out that China’s achievements to date merely draw attention to how far it lags behind. Russia’s first cosmonaut entered space in 1961, and by 1971 the country had its own space station. The US launched its first astronaut in 1962 and its Skylab station, launched in 1973, was larger than Tiangong-1.

But in an interview last year, the chief designer of China’s moon programme, Wu Weiren, emphasised the long view.

“The lunar probe is the starting point for deep space exploration. We first need to do a good job of exploring the moon and work out the rocket, transportation and detection technology that can then be used for a future exploration of Mars or Venus.”

It helps that China is not constrained by budgetary worries or political wavering. Peter Bond, consultant editor of Jane’s Space Systems and Industry, said one of the programme’s strengths was China’s system of five-year plans.

“They are taking a step-by-step approach, taking their time and gradually improving their capabilities. They are putting all the pieces together for a very capable, advanced space industry,” he told the Associated Press.

It’s a long way from the programme’s origins in the 1950s when, at the height of a catastrophic famine, the country’s communist leader, Mao Zedong, poured money into space and nuclear weapons research as a strategic challenge to his ideological enemies. China’s military remains heavily involved in the country’s space activities, which has proved a barrier to greater cooperation with the US. But Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, redirected space endeavours toward scientific ends through such things as telecommunications and weather satellites.

In 2001, China unveiled the blueprint for an ambitious civilian space programme: a lunar presence by 2005, a fully-fledged moon base by 2010 and an experimental factory and farm a decade later. The timeline and even the goals were undoubtedly little more than rhetorical devices, though lunar exploration does have its attractions.

Ouyang Ziyuan, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, argues that an outpost on the moon would benefit national security, scientific research and national unity. He also suggests that the moon could supply raw materials and that its low gravity makes it an obvious launch pad for space exploration.

Just months before the launch of Tiangong-1, former NASA administrator Scott Pace highlighted the political significance of a robust space programme. Scott, a supporter of the plan (cancelled by President Obama) to return Americans to the moon, said: “Space leadership is highly symbolic of national capabilities and international influence, and a decline... will be seen as symbolic of a relative decline in US power and influence.”

China will be looking to exploit the flipside of that equation.

By Vaughan Yarwood.

Images sourced from Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons licence.
1. Nie Haisheng and Fei Junlong were on China's second human space flight in 2005.
2. The International Space Station, which looks set to be decommissioned in 2020.
3. Shenzhou-7's launch in 2008. Zhai Zhigang was the commander of the mission, and the first Chinese astroanut to do a spacewalk.