In US-China space race, success depends on lunar landings and orbital ‘parking spots’

Since 2007, Beijing has successfully launched several missions to both the lunar orbit and surface, including on the far side.

It also has a permanently crewed Tiangong space station in low-Earth orbit – setting it up as the only space station in operation when the International Space Station is retired in about 2030.

The rocket launch carrying Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine lunar lander lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Monday. Photo: AFP

And according to official Chinese media, preparations for another lunar mission this summer have been “progressing smoothly”.

The geopolitical scrum that has seen China and the US face off in the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait, Indo-Pacific region and United Nations is intensifying above Earth as the two view each other warily and vie for special “parking spots” in space conferring distinct advantages, including control of routes between Earth and the moon.

“We better watch out that they don’t get to a place on the moon under the guise of scientific research,” warned Bill Nelson, Nasa’s top official as well as a former astronaut and US senator from Florida between 2001 and 2019.

“If you doubt that, look at what they did with the Spratly Islands,” he said, referring to a contested archipelago off the coasts of the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam.

“We’re in a space race.”

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Recently senior Biden administration officials, analysts, and US lawmakers across the political spectrum have sounded alarms over Beijing’s “astropolitical” intentions.

In December, the House select committee on US-China competition issued a specific recommendation to counter the Chinese Communist Party’s “malign ambitions in space”.

The panel’s bipartisan resolution urged Washington to fund programmes pivotal to outcompeting China, “including by ensuring the United States is the first country to permanently station assets at all Lagrange points”.

Nasa administrator Bill Nelson, a former astronaut and ex-senator from Florida, has warned of the possibility of a territorial dispute on the moon between Beijing and Washington. Photo: Reuters

The lawmakers did not elaborate on what the assets would be.

But space experts say understanding what Lagrange points are could offer a clue.

Named after Italian astronomer and mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange in the late 18th century, the L points are described by Nasa as “parking spots” in the region of space between the sun, Earth and moon.

There are five L points each in both the sun-Earth and Earth-moon systems.

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These are locations where the gravitational pull of the two celestial bodies is cancelled out, according to Martin Elvis, an astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Massachusetts.

This balance of forces, or equipoise, renders them relatively stable and thus suitable for placing satellites and telescopes, he said. Spacecraft can be stationed there without requiring much fuel.

Elvis says these advantages make the points ideal for “space cities”, a concept that has captured popular imagination for decades.

He described space cities as giant cylinders that “would rotate slowly and you could stand on the inside surface and the centrifugal force would feel like gravity”.

While L points in the sun-Earth system are considered useful to study the sun, experts say the cislunar space – the points in the Earth-moon system – carry strategic value. Among these, L1 and L2 are most prized owing to their proximity to the moon.

Shawn Willis of the Air Force Institute of Technology in Ohio observed in a report last month that the “future uses of the cislunar region include military satellites in orbit at the Lagrange points used to monitor and possibly control access between the Earth and the moon”.

Positioning, navigating and timing satellites could be another mission suited for these locations because of their ability to reach the near and far sides of the moon, he added, enabling lunar guidance capabilities like those on Earth.

China in 2018 positioned its Queqiao relay satellite at the L2 point in the Earth-moon system to communicate with the Chang’e 4 lunar probe, the first to reach the moon’s far side.

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Queqiao has a planned lifespan of five years. Queqiao 2 is expected to be launched this year to support the Chang’e 6 mission, which will attempt to bring the first-ever soil and rock samples from the moon’s far side.

Beijing also plans to start building a lunar base in the next five years with at least one brick made of lunar soil in about 2028, then send humans to the moon by 2030.

Last week, Kathleen Hicks, the US deputy defence secretary, said both Russia and China were “evolving their military doctrines to extend into space” and “deploying capabilities that can target GPS and other vital space-based systems”.

Their “aggressive actions” sought to turn space into a “warfighting domain”, she added.

A photo taken by the rover Yutu-2 on January 11, 2019, shows the Chang’e 4 probe lander on the moon. Photo: Xinhua/China National Space Administration

GPS, or the Global Positioning System – created, owned and controlled by the US government – is a satellite constellation that provides critical positioning and navigational information for military, civil and commercial use.

Most modern devices around the world today have inbuilt GPS receivers. Nevertheless, the US is not sitting idly by.

Eager to position at the Earth-moon L2 point, the US is working with commercial and international partners on the Gateway programme as part of the Artemis missions to return to the moon. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is one of the private companies involved.

Nasa said the Gateway programme entailed building a small space station that would orbit the moon to deliver “essential support for lunar surface missions”.

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Monitoring the cislunar regime, communicating freely across it and safely navigating through it would be crucial to enabling growing scientific and economic opportunities, said Charles Galbreath of the Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies in Virginia.

Noting developments in the South China Sea and agreeing with Nasa’s top concerns about Beijing’s “employing a territorial approach” to the moon, Galbreath said the assessment was based on statements by a senior Chinese official comparing the moon to the disputed Diaoyus, which Japan also claims and calls the Senkaku Islands.

“The universe is an ocean, the moon is the Diaoyu Islands, Mars is Huangyan Island. If we don’t go there now even though we’re capable of doing so, then we will be blamed by our descendants,” said Ye Peijian, the head of China’s lunar programme, in 2018.

“If others go there, then they will take over, and you won’t be able to go even if you want to. This is reason enough.”

Elvis of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory reckoned that competition focused on the moon’s south pole because that part of the lunar surface gets “permanent sunlight”, meaning there would be a “permanent power source” and less severe temperatures.

However, the lunar poles also contain deep craters that do not receive any sunlight. These locations are expected to hold ancient ice deposits and useful minerals.

Last year India laid claim to becoming the first country to successfully conduct a hard landing on the moon’s south pole. At about the same time, Russia made a failed attempt to reach the coveted lunar region.

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Nasa’s Artemis 2, previously scheduled to send four astronauts for a lunar fly-by this year, is now expected to take off in September 2025.

Artemis 3, which would put humans near the moon’s south pole for the first time ever, was delayed from 2025 to 2026. China is expected to arrive there with an uncrewed lander by 2027.

Perhaps anticipating a high-stakes race above Earth, a White House strategy paper released in 2022 called for a “rules-based international order” in space.

And like on Earth, the US has sought to woo allies, forging new principles for regions far from the planet.

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Currently 33 countries including India and Brazil have signed the Washington-led Artemis Accords, introduced in 2020 to facilitate “peaceful” international space cooperation.

While China is not a member of the agreement, it has invited international partners to collaborate on its lunar missions.

Whether regarding the moon or Lagrange points, global cooperation was necessary, Elvis said, referring to the entire region above Earth as “real estate” in space.

“There will be some limit to the number of satellites you can get there because of crowding at some point,” he added. “Collisions and debris will be bad for both”.

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