Heavenly Palace. That’s the name of the space station that China began building this year, with completion scheduled for 2022. The Heavenly Palace —Tiangong, in Mandarin— is much smaller than the International Space Station (ISS), but the ambitions of the Chinese space program are anything but modest.
In 2020, a Chinese probe returned to Earth bringing soil samples from the Moon. Also last year, the Chinese started up the BeiDou, a satellite navigation system that rivals the familiar GPS.
The year 2021, in turn, represents a milestone in the Chinese space program, with the start of construction of the Heavenly Palace (in addition to the landing of a probe on Mars). Right now, in orbit, there are three taikonauts, including a female, dispatched in September for a record six months off Earth. They will help build the space station, among other tasks.
For Beijing, the decision to have its own space station had a powerful catalyst. In 2011, the US banned China from participating in the ISS, an undertaking that involves space agencies from different countries and that for 21 years has ensured a continuous human presence in space. This week, for example, a Russian and two Japanese returned from the ISS.
Ten years ago, the US Congress, driven by national security, passed the so-called Wolf Amendment, by which NASA, the US space agency, was banned from using funds to conduct any scientific activity with China. The concern with the military applications of the Chinese space program, its lack of transparency and the fear that cooperation would accelerate China’s scientific and technological development contributed to this.
Unable to participate in the ISS, China then bet on its Heavenly Palace. It promotes it as an initiative open to international cooperation and potentially to foreign astronauts. The three taikonauts currently aboard Tiangong are carrying out scientific experiments from 17 countries, in areas such as biotechnology, astronomy and physics.
The ISS, moreover, has its expiry date expired. Tiangong ends up serving as an incentive for the US to continue investing in maintenance and repairs to the ISS, under penalty that the only space station in operation is the Chinese one.
A decade after the Wolf amendment in the US, the question that remains is whether the effect was to reinforce the Chinese space program — contrary to what was intended (the experience, by the way, makes one wonder if this will not be the result of the current restrictions to Chinese access to advanced semiconductors).
Collaboration, with all the risks, could have accelerated important scientific advances and, above all, facilitated the definition of new international rules for space, which grows in importance given the technological progress in this area. Today the possibility of new understandings seems more remote, with mutual distrust on the rise and two stations in orbit.
As uncomfortable as comparisons to the Cold War may be, it is irresistible to remember that in the 1970s the US and USSR had more cooperation in space than the US and China do today. The current ISS has an American and a Russian segment. It shouldn’t be impossible to find a modus vivendi with the Chinese.
Long-term goals of the Chinese space program include manned missions and the establishment of a base with a human presence on the Moon, as well as robotic missions to Mars. There are also plans for Jupiter and for the construction of a 1 km long space vehicle. Chinese companies are also joining the circuit, with satellites and launching rockets.
In 2022, the rivalry on Earth will continue to have repercussions in space.
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