China is expected to launch its own space station into low-earth orbit by 2024, American intelligence officials assess, part of an effort to surpass the United States as the preeminent space power.
“There’s just no question, as a general matter, that China is focused on achieving leadership in space, in effect, as compared to the United States,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a Senate oversight panel on Wednesday before urging further decision during a closed session.
Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping aspires to make one very visible display of his ambitions in the coming weeks, as Chinese officials have “entered [the] pre-launch phase” for the core of a low-earth orbit space station, per state media. This project is expected to unfold in stages over the next few years, according to Haines’s team of analysts.
“We expect a Chinese space station in low Earth orbit (LEO) to be operational between 2022 and 2024,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a report released this week. “China also has conducted and plans to conduct additional lunar exploration missions, and it intends to establish a robotic research station on the Moon and later an intermittently crewed lunar base.”
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A trio of Chinese astronauts could be living in the core module within months, according to a trade publication analysis. “China is aiming to construct its three-module space station with 11 launches across 2021-2022,” Space News observed this week. “These will consist of three module launches and visits by four crewed missions and four cargo spacecraft. Chinese astronauts are currently in training for space station missions, with 12 astronauts expected to fly on the four missions.”
Those ambitions would punctuate China’s emergence as a rival to the U.S., which launched the International Space Station in 1999, placing “the third brightest object in the sky” into orbit with the assistance of Russian experts — a cooperative effort intended at the time to demonstrate post-Cold War comity and technological possibility. It would be a major achievement and opportunity for Chinese researchers.
“To fly humans in space and do it successfully, you have to master every field of technical endeavor — chemistry; physics; every form of engineering; medicine, you name it, you have to be a master in it,” Scott Pace, then-executive secretary of the White House National Space Council, told the Washington Examiner in 2018. “And by operating in a literally alien environment, you learn things that you would not learn if you simply stayed at home.”
Chinese state media portrays this development as a peaceful display of interest in space, in alleged contrast with U.S. efforts.
“China’s space missions are mainly for peaceful purposes, and fruits of development can be shared with others, to offer great help to the progress of space technology, which is different from the U.S.’s space technology that mainly serves the military,” Chinese aerospace expert Song Zhongping was quoted as saying by the Global Times, a state-media organ known for hawkish statements.
China has developed and used at least one kind of anti-satellite missile, which it used to destroy a weather satellite in 2007, alarming U.S. and NATO officials, who see a growing national security risk from such capabilities.
“The PLA will continue to integrate space services—such as satellite reconnaissance and positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT)—and satellite communications into its weapons and command-and-control systems to erode the US military’s information advantage,” Haines’s team warned in the latest annual threats report. “China has already fielded ground-based ASAT missiles intended to destroy satellites in [low-earth orbit] and ground-based ASAT lasers probably intended to blind or damage sensitive space-based optical sensors on LEO satellites.”
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Haines hesitated to describe in public how the U.S. envisions countering those threats but emphasized that it would involve the newly founded Space Force and private sector initiatives.
“The private sector has just become increasingly important in our efforts to contest and to work, essentially, against contestations to our leadership in space,” Haines told the senators. “Economically, from a security perspective, from a communications perspective, and from the perspective of just understanding and intelligence … we want to ensure that we continue U.S. leadership in this area.”
