China has sent its first civilian into orbit as it prepares to launch a manned mission to the moon by 2030 and achieve what President Xi Jinping has described as the country’s “eternal dream” of becoming a space power.
Gui Haichao, an aerospace engineering professor who studied in Canada, was one of a crew of three “taikonauts”, as China’s astronauts are known, who blasted off from north-west China’s Gobi Desert on Tuesday, bound for the country’s space station.
The launch of the Shenzhou-16 spacecraft, China’s 11th crewed space mission, was preceded by a choreographed “departure ceremony” that featured a band and well-wishers waving Chinese flags. State media provided blanket coverage of the launch.
China has made rapid progress on its space programme as it competes with the US to gain an edge in advanced technology with civilian and military uses. The deputy director of China’s space agency on Monday confirmed plans to put a taikonaut on the Moon by 2030. In 2019, the country became the first to land on the far side of the Moon.
The following year, it completed the Beidou satellite constellation, a rival to the US Global Positioning System.
China landed a rover on Mars in 2021, where it plans to send a crewed mission by 2033 and launched the first part of its space station, which is designed to remain in orbit for at least a decade. China is the only country with its own such facility after the US barred it from participating in the rival International Space Station in 2011 over national security and technology theft concerns.
In a white paper published last year, China insisted its space programme was peaceful and that it would co-operate with other countries to “safeguard outer space security”.
But the US suspects China has military ambitions in space in addition to its civilian operations, particularly as Beijing is teaming up with Russia on parts of the programme.
The China-Russia space partnership aimed to “counter western political and economic pressure, facilitate multipolarization and achieve common national security goals,” said a paper released this month by the China Aerospace Studies Institute think-tank of Air University of the US Air Force.
The crew of the Shenzhou-16 is expected to undertake experiments in cutting-edge areas of science and physics, ranging from “the verification of general relativity” to “the origin of life”, according to state media.
China’s space station is a “huge laboratory”, said Quentin Parker, director of the Laboratory for Space Research at the University of Hong Kong. “The reason you have got civilian scientists up there is that they are the ones with the experience and knowledge.”
Parker added that eventually the programme would be commercialised.
“China’s ambition as far as a space station is concerned is only just starting,” he said. “They are talking now about 10 years from now having tourists on board.”
China has sought to use the space programme as an instrument of soft power, stirring up national pride domestically and offering other countries the opportunity to participate, analysts said.
But Beijing has struggled to generate as much international support for its programme as US-backed initiatives such as the Artemis Accords, a framework for co-operation in space signed in 2020 by eight countries including the US, UK, Japan and Australia.
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