Illustration: Liu Rui/GT m Illustration: Liu Rui/GT
Chinese experts battered the latest round of attacks from NASA chief Bill Nelson, saying his smearing remarks against China's space development are yet another ridiculous and pathetic attempt to hype the "China threat" theory to get more funding, which only exposes the US' own hegemonic and colonial ambitions. In an interview with POLITICO, Nelson said the race to the moon between the US and China is getting tighter and the next two years could determine who gains the upper hand. He warned that Beijing could try to "dominate" the locations they step foot on the lunar surface or even try to "keep the US out," while citing the Nansha Islands as an "example" to prove his point. The remarks angered Chinese researchers and commentators who have repeatedly made clear that China's exploration of the moon is dedicated to the advancement of humanity. "Being a former astronaut himself, it is pathetic that he would play the trick of a thief crying 'stop thief,'" Song Zhongping, a space analyst and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Tuesday. It is an established fact written into the United Nations Outer Space Treaty and others that the moon does not belong to any country in the world, while the Nansha Islands are indisputably part of China's territory. Comparing these two shows that Nelson does not even understand international law or the Outer Space Treaty, Song noted. Nelson's attempt in a way reflects the mentality that the US wants to colonize the moon and consolidate its own hegemony in space, analysts said, evident in the new space version of an "Enclosure Movement" of the Artemis program, which gathered "like-minded" partners such as Canada, Japan and Europe but excludes China and Russia. Nelson's remarks failed even to convince its own scholars. Victoria Samson, Washington director of the Secure World Foundation, said she is dubious about the "moon brawl," noting that China, like the US, is a party to the Outer Space Treaty, which bars nations from making territorial claims on any celestial body, including the moon, POLITICO reported. It will be difficult for any nation to maintain a long-term human presence in deep space, she said, which makes the claims more unrealistic. Nelson's remarks followed US congressional approval to fund NASA with $24.5 billion in fiscal 2023, about half a billion dollars less than US President Joe Biden had requested. While still expressing "confidence" that the next moon mission could happen as planned to send a crew into the moon's orbit by 2024, he admitted that the agency is "under intense pressure" because it has been forced, as a cost-saving measure, to reuse all the avionics inside the Artemis I capsule for Artemis II. Huang Zhicheng, a Chinese expert in aerospace science and technology, told the Global Times on Tuesday that NASA, with a lot on its plate including the operation of the International Space Station, the Artemis program and deep-space exploration projects, is hyping the "China threat" theory to get more money, as the just-concluded Space Launch System is already years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. There is still a huge gap in the budget and many problems to solve for the US' manned moon landing to succeed, Huang said. Specifically, Boeing that is undertaking the rocket launch tasks for the Artemis program has a chaotic management and it is hard to get the tasks done on time. For another thing, the moon lander being developed by SpaceX is yet to achieve its designated progress, and if the lander cannot be completed successfully this year, it may further delay the entire project, Huang noted. Publicly attacking China's space program has become routine for NASA in the past few months. In December, the NASA chief accused China of being "one of the very few nations" that would not be partners with the US and that it is being "very secretive" in terms of space programs. In September, Nelson accused China of lacking needed transparency over issues. In July, the NASA chief blatantly claimed that China is "trying to occupy the moon." In May, he said that China stole the US' space technology.
"These accusations fired by NASA are unfounded and unjustified," Song said. "China has always had a cooperative and open attitude in the space sector."
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Chinese aerospace experts on Thursday slammed NASA's Administrator Bill Nelson for his "ridiculous" and "outrageous" remarks after the senior official alleged that China is "good at stealing" American designs in a "space race."
The line-up of three taikonauts for Shenzhou-15 manned spaceflight mission, Zhang Lu, Fei Junlong, and Deng Qingming (from left to right). Photo: VCG
China on Monday unveiled the line-up of three taikonauts for Shenzhou-15 manned spaceflight mission that is set to be launched on Tuesday night. The trio led by mission commander Fei Junlong with two space newcomers Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu are going to conduct a direct handover in orbit with the Shenzhou-14 crew at the China Space Station in construction, which shall mark a first in China's aerospace history.
The upcoming Shenzhou-15 crewed spaceflight mission is not only the anchor-leg launch mission at the China Space Station construction stage, but also is the first one to embark on the next operational stage, Fei, the 57-year-old veteran taikonaut who visited the space as the mission commander in the China's Shenzhou-6 mission in 2005, remarked at a press conference on Monday at the Jiuquan Satellite Space Launch Center in Northwest China's Gansu Province.
The crew will carry out more experiments in orbit, operate, maintain and repair relevant equipment and above all execute even more challenging extravehicular activities, or known as spacewalks, with more complicated paths to take on, Fei said on Monday.
The Shenzhou-15 crew has undergone great amount of specific training, which made them very confident to deliver all the set goals and to successfully complete their space run, Fei said.
Deng Qingming, 56, is among the first batch of taikonauts trained in China that includes the country's first astronaut Yang Liwei and also his mission commander Fei in the Shenzhou-15 mission. He has served as a backup for nearly 25 years, in missions such as the Shenzhou-9 and 10, but never got the chance to fly. This will be his first time ever in space.
Zhang Lu, 46, also a new face, was selected in the second batch of taikonauts trained in China in 2010.
Mission insiders told the Global Times on Monday that the two crews of six taikonauts will carry out the space station handover in a face-to-face manner for the first time in the country's manned space history and that is not only of symbolic significance but also carries great practical values to the overall development of the country's first permanent space outpost.
Sources with China's astronaut training system, told the Global Times on Monday that such feat would enable the predecessor Shenzhou-14 to introduce and share what their work and life would be like inside the space station with the new Shenzhou-15 crew directly, boosting the continuity and efficiency of the handover.
It would also help save the resources to set the space station combo from occupied state to unoccupied one and then back again. And the handover will be more target-oriented, especially for those ongoing experiments and space station maintenance work, the sources said.
Having six taikonauts simultaneously onboard the China Space Station in construction, would also verify its performance under the full load condition, which would lay groundwork for future tasks where more payload technicians are needed for more complicated experiments, Song Zhongping, a space watcher and TV commentator, told the Global Times.
By plan, the handover will last for a week or so, and after that, Shenzhou-14 crew will return to the Dongfeng landing site on Earth.
As the temperature drops to somewhere near minus 20 C in Jiuquan around this time of the year, the launch of Shenzhou-15, which is via a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan center, also faces a special challenge of extremely low temperature.
According to the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), the developer of the Long March-2F rocket, Shenzhou spacecraft had only been launched twice in unscrewed condition during the Shenzhou-1 and 4 missions in late November. Shenzhou-15 would be first one to be carried out with taikonauts onboard in the cold weather.
However, the CALT explained that they have taken such unique challenge into consideration. They have also confirmed the two sets of the temperature system inside the rocket's nose cone, to make sure that the temperature of the propellant of the return and propelling module meets the launch condition.
