The Hindu : International : China, Japan launch race to the moon

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Sunday, Mar 06, 2005

International

International

China, Japan launch race to the moon

By Justin McCurry and Jonathan Watts

TOKYO/BEIJING, MARCH 5. When a rocket carrying a weather satellite blasted into orbit last weekend it did more than restore confidence in Japan's battered space programme — it ignited talk of a space race with the country's old rival, China.

Forty years after the heyday of the U.S.-Soviet space race, the emerging contest between these two Asian powers is already showing signs of ferocity.

China may have put a man into orbit, but Japan, it seems, intends to build a station for him on the moon.

This is no small boast from a country whose previous launch, in November 2003, ended in ignominy when a rocket carrying two spy satellites had to be destroyed 10 minutes into the mission after a booster failed to separate.

The loss of the satellites was bad enough. That the failure came only a month after China had become the third nation to put a man in orbit compounded the embarrassment of Japan's space agency, JAXA.

While Tokyo's space team went back to the drawing board, Beijing's leaders took every opportunity to use their success to demonstrate China's rising power.

Within hours of the first yuhangyuan (space voyager), Lt Col Yang Liwei, arriving back on earth, the Government organised a rally in central Beijing, turning the astronaut into a national hero.

Fighting back

Japan is fighting back. The Mainichi newspaper has reported this week that Tokyo plans to establish a manned space station on the moon and to have its own version of the U.S. space shuttle up and running by 2025.

JAXA also hopes to put an exploratory robot on the moon by 2010 and, five years later, to have developed the technology needed for humans to stay on the moon for extended periods.

Officials acknowledge the plans, but insist they are still at the discussion stage.

``We are talking in that way, but nothing has been fixed,'' said Yoshifumi Inatani, of JAXA's institute of space and astronautical science

``We haven't decided on specifics or the budget required or any of the details.''

However, the agency is expected to submit a report on its plans to the Government by the end of the month.

Given the strong anti-Japanese sentiment among the Chinese public, and the frosty relations at Government level, there is little doubt that China's National Space Administration will not want to be upstaged by its Japanese counterpart. Beijing, not surprisingly, also has its eyes on the moon.

Last year, the country established a project to collect lunar samples. The first, 1.4billion yuan stage of the Chang'e project — named after a fairy in a popular folk tale who flew to the moon — is expected to be completed in 2007 with the launch of a satellite. Three years later, the first unmanned vessel is expected to land on the lunar surface. —

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