(dailynewyorknews) – China plans space laboratories to take samples from the moon and prepare for the construction of space stations in the next five years, according to an ambitious plan launched this week is to put the country on the world map of space exploration .
China also plans to launch manned and cargo space in the middle of the decade, according to a government white paper. The ultimate goal of the country in the long term is a manned Moon landing.
“With economic progress, also comes the need for scientific and exploration,” said Jiao Weixin, a professor at the School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Beijing. “Investing in space exploration, China wants to contribute and be a major player in the world in more than one level.”
The Chinese announced this week plans to come as the United States dropped the ambitions and funding for space exploration.
Since 2003, China has made great strides in its space program, including becoming the third country after Russia and the United States put a man in space. Successfully completed a spacewalk in 2008.
In November, the successful automatic docking and return an unmanned spacecraft, Shenzhou-8, opened the way for the creation of laboratory space in the future of China. The spacecraft took off from a launch site in the Gobi desert in northwest China, a month after the first space laboratory module Tiangong-1 was launched into space.
China says its space program long-term military use for peaceful purposes. However, their activities have generated controversy in the past, as when he shot dead its satellites in 2007, for example. On the move alarmed some officials in the United States and other countries and expressed concern about the militarization of the space race.
Some experts say a critical gap in China and the U.S.. spatial relationships is the lack of debate regularized in the area of ??security, which took place between Washington and Moscow during the Cold War.
“In this sense, the Obama administration has made overtures to military to military level,” said Clay Moltz, Professor, Department of National Security Affairs Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, in an e-mail response. “The ball is now in the court of China to respond. How do you respond could say much about their true intentions in space.”
Two other home space missions are planned for 2012, with at least one of them inhabited. But despite progress, some experts say China has a long way to go in the development of space technology.
“China has yet to reach the countries that started their space programs in the 1960s,” said Jiao. “It may be impressive to see what China has done in the last decade, but there is still a long way to go.”
The paper also shows that China will develop technology to monitor space debris, the study of black holes and the development of small satellites for environmental monitoring and disaster prediction.
Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/30/world/asia/china-space-program/index.html?hpt=ias_c2
