MOONBASE CHINA

Speculation of Chinese ambitions to land on the Moon has been a regular feature of Western press coverage of the program since the flight of Yang Liwei. It has been amply fuelled by Ouyang Ziyuan, director of the Lunar and Planetary Science Research Centre, who has relentlessly promoted the concept of a Chinese lunar landing and base at any opportunity, domestic and international, leading uninformed Western commentators to confuse his campaigns with government intent. Confusion has been compounded by over-analysis: the Chang e lunar program mission sticker comprises a flying dragon, a waxing moon – and footprints – but these were not necessarily indicative of an early manned mission there. Chinese ambitions gained enormous traction when, on 17th September 2007, NASA administrator Mike Griffin told an audience in the Mayflower Hotel that the Chinese would beat the Americans back to the Moon.

China has long Earthly experience of bases far from home. That very year, in 2007, the country began its 24th expedition to Antarctica on board the exploration ship Xuelong, or “red dragon”, and there has been a Chinese base there, Zhongshan, since 1989 – the nearest possible Earthly analog. In October 2009, Dong Nengli of the Manned Space Engineering Program informed the International Astronautical Congress in Daejon, Korea, that conceptual studies of a manned lunar mission were being made. China was likely to look to the USSR for guidance, for the Soviet Union had, in the 1970s, detailed how a lunar base might be developed. The USSR had set down, in detail, no fewer than three models: the L-3M plan of the 1970s, which could put three cosmonauts on the Moon for between two weeks and a month; and two Moonbase sketches, Galaktika and the Zvezda.

In Academicians Envisaging the 21st Century, issued to mark the new millennium, Ouyang Ziyuan outlined the building of a lunar base from first landfall to a self­sufficient colony. If China could build bases at the Earth’s poles, it could do so on the Moon, he said. The chapter described how the lunar colonists would build their own solar power plants, extract minerals from the lunar soil, travel across the Moon in lunar roving vehicles, and make astronomical observations of the heavens. One function of the lunar base will be to observe climate change on the Earth continuously with images of 500-m resolution. At the time the book was published, both the director of the China National Space Administration, Luan Enjie, and the

chief designer of Chinese rockets, Long Lehao, made futuristic speeches about how, later in the century, China would venture on to Mars. During national science week, designed to stimulate children’s interest in science, the exhibits included a Chinese base on the red planet, complete with greenhouses and domes, and, in an adjoining exhibit, a robotic rover vehicle.

Indeed, China began the preliminary studies for manned lunar and Martian expeditions. He Xiaoying looked at how dust affected lunar modules as they came in to land, while Zhen Li and her colleagues outlined the new technologies that must be mastered for Mars, such as aero-capture, closed life-support systems, robotics, and communications [14]. They would be preceded by extensive robotic missions.

We know the next steps in the Chinese Moon program (Chang e 3 and 4 rovers; 5 and 6 sample returns) and the next planned Martian mission (Yinghuo 2, in 2015). After that, in Roadmap 2050, China projects a rover or a planetary science laboratory in 2020, a sample return in 2033, and a manned Mars landing by 2050. During the period from 2035, China intends to make its first robotic missions to Mercury, the asteroids, Jupiter, and Saturn, and send a probe to reach the heliospheric boundary at 100 AU. We may surmise the names of the next set of Chinese interplanetary spacecraft, for they will likely be based on those in ancient Chinese astronomy (Mars we already know) (Table 10.9).