China plans to keep a high-tempo schedule of rocket launches designed to “accelerate the development of China as a space power” over the year ahead, according to one of Beijing’s top space officials.
“We need to fully complete various aerospace tasks, ensure the complete success of major flight test missions and accelerate the development of China as a space power,” China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation Wu Yansheng said this week.
That intention augurs more than 40 rocket launches, according to state media, and the expected completion of China’s bespoke space station. Such projects could propel China, and its emerging partner, Russia, to the pole position in a new space race.
“China has carried out 55 space launch missions in 2021, with this number ranking first in the world,” Chinese state media underscored last week.
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U.S. and European officials ended 2021 with a milestone of their own — the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope on Christmas Eve. “Today’s launch is the mission of the decade,” Arianespace CEO Stephane Israel, whose Paris-based company provided the rocket that put the telescope into space. “The mission demanded 20 years of preparation hand in hand with NASA. It’s the third launch we have performed for the American space agency, clearly illustrating the advantage of large-scale international collaboration in space.”
In parallel, China and Russia agreed to collaborate on satellite navigation systems as an extension of their much-touted “strategic partnership of cooperation” against the United States.
“We have been working and will continue to work with China, which applies to all kinds of programs, including exploring deep space,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this year. “And I think there is nothing but positive information here. Frankly, I don’t see any contradictions here.”
U.S. officials observe with alarm Russian and Chinese attempts to develop anti-satellite weapons and other capabilities that might turn space into the scene of a military conflict.
“The test has, so far, generated over 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris and hundreds of thousands of pieces of smaller orbital debris that now threaten the interests of all nations,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in November, after Russia destroyed a defunct satellite launched by the Soviet Union.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responded at the time by claiming that the United States had scuppered Russian and Chinese efforts to develop a new treaty on conflict in outer space.
“We would prefer that the United States should sit down at the negotiating table at last, instead of making groundless accusations, and discuss its concerns with regard to the treaty, which Russia and China are proposing to prevent this arms race and which the U.S. cannot accept,” Lavrov said in November. “It would be very interesting for us to hear a specific and reasoned position and not pretexts.”
U.S. officials have refused to discuss treaty proposals that do not cover Russian and Chinese ground-based anti-satellite weapons, while the rapid innovation of space-based assets makes it difficult even to agree on the definition of a weapon in space. The completion of the Chinese space station could accelerate those innovations, with unpredictable consequences for the international balance of power.
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“Our strategic competitors, including China, are indeed aggressively investing in a wide range of space technologies, including nuclear power and propulsion to fulfill their ambitions for sustained human lunar presence, as well as Martian and deep space science missions,” NASA senior adviser Bhavya Lal told lawmakers in October. “They represent the type of investment that could help the U.S. maintain its global technological edge at a time when more countries around the world seek to fulfill space exploration objectives.”
