Chinese astronauts may land on Moon first in 21st century

William Atkins
Friday, 05 October 2007 20:09

Science - Space

NASA head tells an audience that he believes China will land on the Moon’s surface before the United States returns. Whether it is China, Japan, or India the race is on to send humans to the Moon. In fact, Japan just orbited an unmanned lunar probe.         

NASA administrator Michael Griffin told a Washington D.C. audience on September 17, 2007, as part of a series of lectures honoring the fifth anniversary of the establishment of NASA (July 29, 1958), that “I personally believe that China will be back on the moon before we are.” He continued by saying, "I think when that happens, Americans will not like it. But they will just have to not like it." [Aviation Week article: “China To Explore Moon Sooner: Griffin”]

Japan and Selene

According to officials from the Japan Research Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Selene (“Kaguya”) probe successfully attained lunar orbit on Thursday, October 4, 2007, fifty years to the day when the Soviets put the first artificial probe in orbit about the Earth: Sputnik 1. The Kaguya mission is widely considered the largest lunar project since the U.S. Apollo program of the late 1960s and yearly 1970s. It was launched from the Tanegashima Space Center on September 14, 2007 (JST) with the use of a H-IIA launch vehicle.

Specifically, a rocket was fired at 6:20 a.m. JST (Japan Standard Time) to insert the spacecraft into a 63 mile by 7,296 mile (101 by 11,741 kilometer) orbit about the Moon’s poles. It will be placed into a more circular orbit over the next few weeks. According to a JAXA press release, “As a result of the orbit calculation after the maneuver, we have confirmed that the KAGUYA was injected into the following lunar orbit. The satellite is confirmed to be in good health.”

As the United States beat the Soviet Union in 1969, it is likely that China will beat the United States to the Moon in the twenty-first century, unless the United States begins to take China along with Japan and India seriously in their quests for space supremacy.

In The Future

The European Space Agency sent its SMART-1 (Missions for Advanced Research in Technology 1) probe to the Moon in 2003. The next ones come from China, India, and the United States.

The Aviation Week article quoted in this article  is titled “China To Explore Moon Sooner: Griffin.” We should heed NASA administrator Michael Griffin’s advice before it’s too late. The article could easily change titles to read “How the Mighty have Fallen.”

Whether it is a race to the Moon or not a concerted effort to the Moon and beyond will help to advance any country technologically and scientifically in many different fields.

Griffin went on to say, "I think we will see, as we have seen with China's introductory manned space flights so far, we will see again that nations look up to nations that appear to be at the top of the technical pyramid and they want to do deals with those nations.”

He continues, "That's one of the things that made us the world's greatest economic power. So I think we'll be reinstructed in that lesson in the coming years."

Words to the wise.

The Unannounced Race

NASA is expecting to land a human on the Moon no later than 2020. China is planning to send an unmanned orbiter (Chang’e 1) to the Moon later in October 2007, and then send a rover to land on the Moon in 2012, collect sample, and return to earth in 2017. China hopes to land humans on the Moon earlier than 2020.

Japan is also expecting to send a manned lunar landing mission to the Moon around 2020.

India, a third country with lunar hopes, is expecting to launch Chandrayaan, an unmanned lunar orbiter, by 2008. They expect to launch their first astronaut into space by 2014, with a manned lunar landing mission by 2020.

Russia and Germany have announced unmanned lunar orbiter missions, both around 2012. No manned missions have been announced, however. The United Kingdom has indicated that it may send an unmanned probe around the Moon before the end of the 2000s decade.

Whether we call it a race or not, it sure looks like a race to the Moon.