What are China’s plans for the Moon?

“The dark side of the moon” is not only one of Pink Floyd’s biggest hits, it is also the new scale of the world’s geopolitical balance and the new goal of conquest of the great powers. Are you among those who have caught the reference to the Chinese Chang’e-6 mission? Then you already know that the probe landed in Mongolia with a load of about two kilograms of lunar minerals, the study of which will also allow us to obtain information on the possible presence of water on the satellite.

The goddess of the Moon Chang’e has watched over the mission that bears her name, launched by CNSA, the Chinese space agency engaged in a head-to-head with NASA and its Artemis lunar program – which also actively involves the Italian space agency – for the conquest of the new Far West: the dark side of the Moon, precisely. But the clash can wait, if it is true that the leaders of CNSA had expressed their willingness to share the lunar samples with the entire international scientific community.

Research made in Italy
“The return of the Chang’e 6 probe is a success for everyone.” Giorgio Valente, president of ASI, commented on the news, adding that “the material that reached Earth is precious and of considerable importance for studies on the next steps related to the human return to the Moon. The study of the regolith collection will be fundamental to confirm the composition and the possible use of this widespread material on the lunar surface.” ASI, in collaboration with the Polytechnic University of Milan, is developing the Oracle project, aimed at studying regolith, from which it should be possible to extract oxygen. With the University of Padua, the Agency is then developing the Glams project, which, again starting from regolith, studies 3D printing processes that create cement binders. These studies, adds Valente, “represent one of the many applicative implications of ASI activities related to Italy’s involvement in the return to the Moon. The use of “raw” materials in situ represents a key capability of future space exploration missions.” Side note: Among the technologies on board Chang’e 6 was the Innri passive laser retroreflector, designed by the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics, to control the positioning of the probe.

China is coming close
Bill Nelson had warned us: the NASA CEO does not seem to trust the Country of the Dragon and speaks of a “new Space Race”, with the fear that these “avant-garde” achievements made in the name of science could, in due time, be claimed by China as a right of pre-emption on the disputed lunar south pole. Another issue is the orbiting International Space Station. The ISS has hosted astronauts from all over the world for the last twenty years and will be decommissioned by 2031 – NASA has awarded the de-orbit contract to SpaceX – so CNSA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, are already cooperating for the construction of the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) that will host cosmonauts – Russian – and taikonauts – Chinese. NASA, for its part, is designing a lunar space station, the Lunar Gateway, which involves ESA, Canada, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. Are we witnessing a race “to see who gets there first”? The Chinese government has said it wants to land a crewed astronaut on the moon by 2030, while NASA’s Artemis program is aiming to land male and female astronauts on the moon by 2026.

Telecommunications, another advantage?
A “magpie bridge” – Queqiao – will facilitate communications between Earth and the “black moon”, which we never see due to synchronous rotation, that is, the fact that the rotation period coincides with the revolution period. This makes observation and exploration of the hidden lunar hemisphere complex and the Moon itself represents an obstacle to communications with our planet. The Chinese constellation already placed the first satellite in 2019 and should be completed by 2030, according to what Wu Yanhua – head of the Deep Space project – declared to the state news agency, Xinhua. The infrastructure upgrade already began in March 2024 with the launch of Queqiao-2, equipped with a 4.2-meter diameter parabolic antenna, the largest ever sent from Earth. In this whole scenario, there are economic, political and military interests at stake. All we can do is watch the stars, trying to understand how it will end.