China’s quest for space power begins with moon dust

Chinese nuclear scientists are studying samples returned by China’s Chang’e 5 late last year in the first mission to return with lunar material since the Soviet Union in 1976. Under the microscope at the Beijing Research Institute of Uranium Geology, one of them is a 50-milligram rock—about the size of a lentil—believed to contain an isotope called helium-3.

The isotope, a type of atomic helium with a different number of neutrons, is thought by scientists to one day have the potential to provide safe nuclear power in a fusion reactor, as it is not radioactive. Rare on Earth, helium-3 is thought to be abundant on the Moon.

While researchers in the US and other countries have studied the isotopes, China’s renewed discovery is part of a decades-long plan to position itself as a major space power, which will add to the country’s growing economic and strategic influence on Earth. it shows. Since having stopped working with the US space agency by law a decade ago, the country has invested heavily in its own program. China is still holding on technically but is trying to gain an edge through its moon missions.

China’s counterpart to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Artemis program—a US-led plan to return humans to the Moon around 2025—is growing in ambition. From being the first nation to land on the far side of the Moon in 2019, to maneuvering a rover across Mars, and building its own space station this year, China’s rapid moves have sparked a new space race with the US. is of.

In October, Chinese scientists published findings from the Chang’e 5 mission in the journals Science and Nature. The volcanic rock samples they analyzed are the youngest lunar samples, dating back two billion years. Their work shows how lunar composition and water content changed over time, providing new insights into the Moon’s thermal and chemical evolution.

China eventually envisions a future where it commands more power in space: it will have powerful rockets carrying its spacecraft, and its men will be the leaders in exploration around the planets. Those goals are set out in a 2016 white paper that outlines the country’s space ambitions, which is similar to the US national space policy, and China has been consistently achieving its milestones since then.

The push coincides with rising Chinese nationalism under leader Xi Jinping. “You are representative of those who are trying and foraying into China’s space industry in a new era,” Xi said in June of spending time aboard the country’s first space station with astronauts.

Beijing is also establishing more global alliances in space projects. In October, the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced an agreement with its French counterpart to study the Chang’e 5 lunar samples. In March, China announced an alliance with Russia’s space agency to develop a joint Moon base in the coming decade.

“China is now building the Silk Road to space,” said James Head, a professor of geological sciences at Brown University. Said, and Beijing is investing strategically.

While China does not officially publish how much it spends on its space program, data compiled by Namrata Goswami, co-author of the book “Scramble for the Skies”, shows that the country only spends $8 on its citizens. billion to $11 billion. The space program There is no data available on its military spending in space.

NASA chief Bill Nelson said at a congressional hearing in May that approving a proposed $24.8 billion budget for 2022 would allow the US to compete with China by first returning humans to the Moon and eventually returning them to Mars. It will help to take off.

Seeing the influence of companies like SpaceX, China opened its space industry in 2014 and now has dozens of private companies.

David Burback, professor of national security affairs at the US Naval War College, said the rivalry is not like the bitter Cold War competition between the US and the Soviet Union.

“I don’t think any country believes that whoever lands on the next moon is nearly as meaningful to their foreign policy as their overall economic power and diplomatic influence,” said Burbach, who has a personal capacity. I was speaking. Still, China’s space program strengthened support in the US for NASA’s Artemis program, which was created in 2017 by then-President Donald Trump, Mr Burback said.

The three Taikonauts – as the Chinese astronauts are known – are spending six months in their space station, which is scheduled to be completed by the end of next year. Beijing is planning a series of unmanned missions over the next few years, including sending robots to the Moon, as it builds its base with Russia. To prepare for humans to spend months on the Moon, a group of Chinese volunteers lived for a year in a self-contained laboratory in Beijing, growing their own food and recycling water.

“China’s moon program is the most important and central component of its overall space strategy. All these milestones help the country come closer to fulfilling Mr. Xi’s space dream,” Ms. Goswami said.

Chinese officials working with nuclear fusion projects say it could take decades for the efforts to succeed. The Beijing institute to study helium-3, which is backed by state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation, discussed the effort in an August state-media interview and did not respond to a request for further comment.

The theory that the Moon may have abundant reserves of helium-3 goes back several decades. In 1986, scientists at the University of Wisconsin estimated that lunar soil may contain up to one million tons of the isotope, also known as He3.

A byproduct of the Sun’s intense heat, it is carried by solar winds through the Solar System. Because the Moon does not have a magnetic field, near Earth, a veneer of colorless, inert atoms is thought to be embedded on the Moon’s regolith—the blanket of loose deposits that cover its surface.

China’s renewed efforts to study helium-3 are at a very early stage, as there is still no way for humans to easily map, extract or process it.

“There is no element of the operation that has not yet been detected,” said Joseph Michalsky, deputy director of the University of Hong Kong’s Laboratory for Space Research, which is not involved in the Beijing study. “It’s like someone offered you a suitcase. $5 million is full, but it’ll cost $10 million to pick up.”

In the future, there may be machines that vacuum the top layer of the Moon’s surface, which can then be used to meet Earth’s energy needs or to power Moon bases for future missions , Mr. Michalsky said. And even after helium-3 is contained, another obstacle will generate enough heat in a short period of time to create a proper reaction.

China and the US are among dozens of countries collaborating on an international thermonuclear experimental reactor, a $22 billion project being built in France that aims to demonstrate the feasibility of nuclear fusion while maintaining the reaction for a long period of time . Nuclear fusion has long been a holy grail in the energy world. Despite decades of research, no one has been able to produce more energy than it takes to create a fusion reaction. China has also made progress in its own experimental advanced superconducting tokamak reactor in the eastern city of Hefei.

“Research is not only very important for the potential exploitation of such nuclear energy resources on the Moon in the future,” Li Ziying, head of the Beijing Institute, told state-owned China Central Television in August, referring to helium. -3 study. It is also of “great importance for the scientific study of the Moon and its relationship with the Earth”.