Author: Laurie Chen
BEIJING, Jan 29 (Reuters) – China’s main space contractor vowed to develop space tourism over the next five years, state media reported on Thursday, as Beijing accelerates its ambitions for commercial space and deep space exploration in a technology race with the United States.
According to CCTV, the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) said it would “realize flight operations for suborbital space tourism and gradually develop orbital space tourism” and “build gigawatt-level space digital smart infrastructure.”
China and the United States are competing as they look to transform space exploration into a commercially viable business similar to civil aviation and be the first country to exploit the military and strategic advantages of space dominance. China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has vowed to transform China into “the world’s leading aerospace power” by 2045.
The main bottleneck for Beijing so far has been its failure to complete tests of its reusable rockets. U.S. rival SpaceX’s Falcon 9 reusable rocket gives its subsidiary Starlink a near-monopoly on low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites and is also used for orbital space tourism.
Reusability is critical to lowering rocket launch costs and lowering the cost of sending satellites into space. China achieved a record 93 space launches last year, driven by its rapidly maturing commercial space startups, according to official announcements.
However, China has repeatedly described SpaceX’s monopoly on low-Earth orbit satellites as a national security risk and is launching its own constellation of satellites it hopes will number tens of thousands over the next few decades.
At the end of December, Chinese entities submitted documents to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) setting out plans to put about 200,000 satellites into orbit over the next 14 years. With two megaconstellations accounting for the majority, this move will strategically reserve suborbital locations and frequencies for Beijing.
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation’s plans were announced after China unveiled its first interstellar navigation academy at the Chinese Academy of Sciences on Tuesday, aiming to cultivate the next generation of aerospace talents in cutting-edge areas such as interstellar propulsion and deep space navigation.
The new agency marks China’s strategic transition from low-Earth orbit to deep space exploration ambitions, and will support China’s planned lunar research station and efforts to detect extrasolar planets, Xinhua News Agency reported on the inauguration.
Xinhua News Agency wrote: “The next 10 to 20 years will be a window period for leapfrog development in China’s interstellar navigation field. Original innovations and technological breakthroughs in basic research will reshape the deep space exploration pattern.”
CCTV reported on Thursday that China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation will also focus on breakthroughs in key technologies such as small celestial body resource detection and intelligent autonomous mining, and strengthen space debris monitoring and the formulation of international space traffic management rules.
China’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe is the first spacecraft to bring back samples from the far side of the moon in 2024, and Beijing is actively developing international standards for aerospace and space infrastructure to establish itself as a dominant space power.
For nearly a decade, the United States has faced fierce competition from China in returning astronauts to the moon, where no humans have landed since the last U.S. Apollo mission in 1972.
(Reporting by Laurie Chen; Editing by Jamie Freed)