It will be for research and will be open to other nations. The Chinese are investing heavily in their space program. The US is working on its own project for a new human moon landing and at the Lunar Gateway station. Russians and Chinese strengthen their partnership in an anti-Western key.
Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) - China and Russia will build a space station on the moon, the Russian space agency Roscosmos and the Chinese space administration announced yesterday. The project plans to create research facilities on the lunar soil and perhaps also in its orbit. Beijing and Moscow specify that the station will be made available to other nations. It will focus on exploring the satellite and using its resources.
It is China’s biggest collaboration in the space sector. Under a law passed by the US Congress in 2011, the United States cannot in fact cooperate with Beijing in this area. The Chinese have given a strong impetus to their plans for space. In December, the Chang'e-5 spacecraft managed to collect and land samples of lunar material.
With this move, the Chinese and the Russians have announced their challenge to Washington, whose Artemis program aims to bring its astronauts back to the moon by 2024: the first human moon landing since 1972. The US is also working on its own lunar station. “Lunar Gateway” is a project carried out by NASA with its counterparts from the European Union, Canada and Japan.
Russia, which for years has also transported US astronauts to the International Space Station, has refused to join the Lunar Gateway initiative in order to seal the project with the Chinese one. According to several observers this is a further sign of the Sino-Russian willingness to deepen the bilateral partnership in opposition to the Western front.
It is no coincidence that on March 7, on the side-lines of a session of the National People's Congress, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China and Russia should work together to fight possible new "colour revolutions": a reference to the democratic uprisings that in the last 20 years have broken out in many former Soviet nations.