WENCHANG SPACE LAUNCH SITE, China — China launched an uncrewed lunar spacecraft on Friday in a first-of-its-kind mission to return samples from the far side of the moon, the latest step in a rapidly advancing Chinese space program that is spurring competition with the United States and others.
Chang’e 6 lifted off on time at 5:27 p.m. local time (5:27 a.m. ET) from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on China’s southern island of Hainan.
The launch of the lunar probe, in which NBC News was one of a handful of news organizations participating, and the national excitement around it transformed the normally sleepy fishing village of Longlou into a major tourist attraction, with crowds spilling out of tour buses. to the beaches and rooftops with the best views of the spaceport. One loft owner said he sold 200 seats for 200 yuan (about $28) each.
There was a festival-like atmosphere on the beach before the launch; vendors offered space paraphernalia, and groups of children sold Chinese flags for 3 yuan (about 40 cents) each. Families play cards spread out on picnic blankets, while others set up hammocks among palm trees so they can wait in the limited shade.
Yiuwah Ng, a 28-year-old real estate office worker from the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai, traveled six hours by car and three hours by ferry to determine the best spot on the coast where she had been camping for three days. with his friends and his dog.
“I want to witness this historic moment,” he said of the launch, his fourth. “This is an important first step for China’s lunar exploration.”
Max Zhang, a self-described “rocket hunter” from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, has been photographing launches from the beach in Wenchang since 2011.
“I’m addicted to the shock of seeing the launches, especially the sound of the rocket flames,” he said. “It makes my heart flutter.”
‘‘A force to be reckoned with’
If successful, the Chang’e mission would be a crucial step in achieving the country’s goals of landing Chinese astronauts on the moon by 2030 and eventually building a base on the lunar surface.
The outcome of the mission will have implications far beyond China’s borders. The fact that many space travel countries, including Russia, India, Japan and the USA, are setting their sights on the Moon creates a situation that some experts liken to a new type of space race.
“China is trying to prove that it is a power to be reckoned with, and so China is always competing with everyone in space,” said Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. .
A successful Chang’e 6 mission would demonstrate how complex China’s lunar exploration program has become in a relatively short period of time.
“Twenty-five years ago, they had very rudimentary space capabilities,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based public policy think tank. “Going from this to where they are today, I think they have clearly surpassed Russia and their space capabilities are really second only to the United States.”
China made its first moon landing in 2013 with the Chang’e 3 mission, which placed a lander and rover on the lunar surface to study the moon’s surface. Before that, only the United States and the former Soviet Union had successfully landed spacecraft on the moon.
In 2019, China achieved another historic milestone with the Chang’e 4 flyby, becoming the first country to land a probe on the far side of the moon, that is, the part that is not permanently facing Earth.
The following year, in 2020, China returned to the near side of the moon, which always faces Earth, by landing its Chang’e 5 spacecraft on a volcanic plain known as Oceanus Procellarum. The probe took samples from there and brought them back to Earth; this represented a major technological leap forward.
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) held a meeting in Wuhan, China, last week, inviting scientists from the United States, Europe and Asia to apply to borrow lunar samples for their own research. NASA-funded researchers have received rare approval from Congress to submit proposals, raising the possibility of high-profile US-China space cooperation prohibited by US law.
This time, the Chang’e 6 spacecraft aims to land in and collect samples from the South Pole-Aitken basin, an ancient and expanding impact crater on the far side of the moon.
It is difficult to conduct a sample return mission from the side of the Moon that is not always facing Earth because mission controllers on the ground have no way to communicate directly with a spacecraft in that region. Instead, the signals must be transmitted via a satellite currently orbiting the moon, which China launched from the same location on Hainan last month.
Although difficult, this effort can have huge rewards. Research suggests that the near side of the Moon is more volcanically active than the far side; This means that all the Moon samples obtained so far can only tell part of the story of the Moon’s origin and evolution.
Collecting lunar samples from different geological eras and regions “is of great value and importance for all humanity to have a more comprehensive understanding of the origin of the moon and even the solar system,” said mission leader Ge Ping of CNSA’s Lunar Exploration and Space unit. Engineering Center, he told reporters in Hainan on Thursday.
Beyond its scientific goals, the Chang’e-6 mission also raises geopolitical considerations. The flight is a precursor to a pair of Chinese robotic missions to the moon’s south pole to scout sites for building a lunar base. Last year, the Chinese and Russian space agencies agreed to jointly build a research station on the lunar surface.
NASA and its commercial partners also aim to establish a permanent presence at the moon’s south pole, but the agency’s Artemis moon missions have faced numerous delays and budget overruns. In the current timeline, it is stated that American astronauts will return to the lunar surface in 2026 at the earliest.
With China and Russia forming a rival coalition, there is some pressure for the United States to step on the gas pedal, Harrison said.
“It matters who gets there first, it matters how you get there and what kind of coalition you bring with you,” he said.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has warned many times that the United States risks falling behind China’s lunar ambitions. In an interview with Yahoo Finance this week, Nelson outlined what’s at stake in the new space race.
“I think it’s not too difficult for China to suddenly say, ‘We’re here.’ “You stay outside,” he said.
“All countries in the world should explore, develop and use space peacefully,” Ge said Thursday when asked about international competition in space.
“You don’t need to worry too much,” he added. “Space programs are for all people.”
As more countries around the world develop space capabilities, NASA has pushed for greater global cooperation by creating the Artemis Accords in 2020 to promote peaceful, responsible and sustainable practices. U.S. laws prevent China from joining 39 other countries in signing agreements that both China and Russia have criticized as a means of promoting U.S. dominance in space.
Many Western space policy experts have also expressed concern about China and Russia’s intentions. For example, the full scope of China’s ambitions in space is unknown because the space agency does not operate with the same level of transparency as NASA. The country’s space program is also more closely linked to the military than the United States.
“We can never say that China’s investment in civilian space technologies is only civilian and will not be used for military purposes,” said Namrata Goswami, professor at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management and co-author of the 2020 book. “Struggle for the Sky: Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Space.”
While China’s spaceflight ambitions appear to have accelerated in recent years, they are part of a decades-long strategy, Goswami said.
“Many of China’s space program leaders announced these goals and timelines 20 years ago,” he said. “The amazing thing to me is that they are hitting almost all the milestones on time, and that gives them a strategic advantage in the global narrative of who does it better.”
Swope said that as much as the Moon and its resources provoke competition between nations, space exploration can also be unifying.
“We are literally a speck in the universe, and when we go to the moon or explore space, we have the common human trait that as humanity we want to understand and explore the unknown,” he said. “This is beyond politics.”
Janis Mackey Frayer reported from Wenchang Space Launch Site in China and Denise Chow reported from New York.
This article first appeared on NBCNews.com.