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China has outlined big space ambitions for the coming five years, looking into a "near-Earth object defense system" and setting up an international research station on the moon.
The plans were outlined in a government white paper released late last month by China's State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China.
Its authors noted that over the next five years China will "start a new journey towards a space power" [sic] so that it can "pioneer human progress" and "defend national security".
Some view China as a leading competitor to the U.S. in space. Last year, NASA administrator Bill Nelson referred to the country as "a very aggressive competitor"—though he also told Newsweek that he wished China "were a partner with us" in space exploration like Russia has been.
China's space industry has grown in leaps and bounds in recent years, conducting 207 launch missions from 2016 to December 2021, the recent white paper claimed. In 2021, the country set a personal record of 40 launches in a year, with two months to spare, according to SpaceNews, and it's planning to beat that this year.
China now has multiple launch vehicles in its workhorse Long March rocket family and wants to expand it further. The first launch of its new Long March 8 medium-lift rocket took place as recently as December 2020.
Then there was the launch of China's first independent interplanetary mission Tianwen-1 in 2020, which set a lander down on Mars, hot on the heels of NASA's own Perseverance rover, and the launch of the first module of its own national space station, Tiangong, in the spring of 2021.
According to the new five-year plan, China has no plans to slow down. In one section on "space environment governance", the white paper states that it will "study plans for building a near-earth object defense system, and increase the capacity of near-earth object monitoring, cataloguing, early warning, and response".
This has been a recent focus for NASA as well, which launched its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) last year in an effort to develop technology capable of deflecting a hazardous asteroid away from Earth.
Action on Space Debris
China, which was accused of producing potentially dangerous space debris with its Long March 5B booster in May 2021, also said it was seeking to "improve its space debris monitoring system, cataloguing database, and early warning services".
Another significant section of the white paper details China's plans for "planetary exploration," which include launching the upcoming probe Chang'e-6 that will collect and return lunar samples.
The country is also planning to work with other countries to "build an international research station on the moon." The white paper didn't lay out further details, or specify which particular countries China might want to work with to achieve this goal.
NASA is already pursuing plans for its conceptual Artemis Base Camp as part of the wider Artemis moon project, which hopes to see the return of U.S. astronauts to the moon within the next few years.
