At the International Astronautical Congress, China was seeking new partners for its monthly missions. At the same time, they tried not to mention Russia as the country with which they are implementing most of the current projects.
China seeks cooperation in space
At the International Astronautical Congress, which just ended in Paris, the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA) and other organizations of the country showed great activity. The Celestial Empire is looking for partners for its future missions.
The main attention is devoted to the mission “Chang’e-7”, which will land at the South Pole of the Moon and “Chang’e-8”, which will try to extract resources on it. China offers other countries to rent places on these devices for their own research equipment.
A Swedish negative ion detector, an Italian retroreflector, a French radon detection device and a Pakistani cubesat will already be placed on the upcoming Chang’e-6 mission. It will also host a Saudi Arabia rover weighing only 10 kg.
China is also looking for partners for its deep space exploration missions. “Tianwen-2” in 2025 will fly to a near-Earth asteroid and try to get samples on it. “Tianwen-3” will go to Mars, and “Tianwen-4” — to Jupiter and Uranus. And there is still a place on all these devices that can be used by countries wishing to become partners of the Celestial Empire.
Don’t talk about Russia
The largest project that China is currently promoting is its lunar base, which will be launched at the South Pole of our moon in the late 2030s. The Celestial Empire advertises it as a platform for international cooperation.
At the same time, it tries not to name its main partner in this project. Back in the summer of 2021, a roadmap for this project was signed in St. Petersburg, in which it was noted that its co-founders are the Russian Federation and the PRC on equal rights. But this year, for some reason, China comments on the slides that be used in the presentations of that time with the words “the program was launched in China in 2014”.
Of course, the main reason for such a strange change is the war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine. Now any cooperation with the aggressor country is toxic. The only thing that remains unclear is what is behind China’s silence about its recent partner.
The fact that no friendship exists in Russian-Chinese relations is known for a long time. The Celestial Empire is only interested in technology and production facilities. But whether they really put a cross on a country that has not been able to launch anything really new into space for a long time and are looking for new friends remains a mystery. In the end, then it may turn out that the lunar base will remain their common project.
According to spacenews.com
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