The ILRS – Implications of the Joint Russian – Chinese Lunar Base

With the rest of the world distracted by a still persistent Covid pandemic, China and Russia today quietly announced what could be the largest international space cooperation project for both Nations.  

According to the statement released by the Chinese National Space Administration:

This announcement is significant because it signals the rise and maturity of China’s human spaceflight program and the concomitant loss of US preeminence and leadership in the sphere of international space cooperation.

These two fundamental developments will be the subject of this analysis.

China’s ambitious space program has reached a level of maturity and technological sophistication at a level at which Russia, still a preeminent space power, is comfortable in entering into a full joint venture with China; and this on a massive endeavor that will require significant technological exchange and cooperation. 

In the past, especially in the immediate aftermath of the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, Russia while willing to sell China certain obsolete spaceflight hardware for cold hard cash, was hesitant to engage in full technology transfers that would eliminate Russia’s technological lead.  That is no longer the case.  The continuing growth in China’s macro economy has brought with it increased resources for China’s space program.  China’s technology and space capabilities have arguably brought it to parity with Russian and possibly even the United States’ level. 

Likewise, despite a de facto embargo on China by the United States and its allies since 2011, when the “Wolf Amendment” prevented all NASA cooperation and technology exchanges with China or Chinese nationals in any space related endeavors; China, in spite of this, or perhaps because of it, has redoubled its efforts in space exploration. 

In a recent interview with Brian Weeden, director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation, he stated that the US policy of excluding China from human spaceflight and exploration missions to the Moon and beyond has not slowed its rise as a space power,” he said moreover that “Worse, it may create an incentive for China to build an alternative coalition for space exploration that could undermine US traditional leadership role in this area.”

Geoffrey Marcy, an astronomy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, called the ban “completely shameful and unethical”.[4] Sir Martin Rees, the current Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, called the ban a “deplorable ‘own goal’ by the US”.[4]

Aside from ethical considerations, the tangible progress made by China in the past decade has been obvious and impressive!

Shenzhou 5, China’s first crewed mission in space on October 15, 2003, and carried Yang Liwei in orbit for 21 hours and made China the third nation to launch a human into orbit.

Shenzhou 6 with two astronauts, and Shenzhou 7 with 3 astronauts, followed shortly thereafter.

On the heels of the exclusionary Wolf Amendment from the US, On September 29, 2011, China launched Tiangong 1. This module is was the first step to testing the technology required for a planned space station.

A second space lab, Tiangong 2, was launched on September 15 2016.

(In recent years, the pace has only quickened.)

The Tiangong space station, in it’s final form, a larger permanent space station of modular design with a weight of approximately 60 tons is scheduled to be completed by 2022.  The station is constructed from the Tianhe-1 (central module), the scientific modules Mengtian and Wentian, and the Xuntian space telescope (equipped with a two-meter primary mirror equivalent to Hubble’s) will be in proximity to the station. The new Chinese station will be supplied via the Tianzhou cargo vehicles, first launched in 2017 in support of the Tiangong 2 space station.

An interesting fact is that the Tiangong docking system is identical to the Russian APAS-89 system which is used on “Soyuz.” This built-in compatibility allows the Tiangong station to accept Russian components and spacecraft in future should Russia decide to similarly shift its station participation away from ISS towards further collaboration with China.  (Russia has already voiced plans as recently as 2020 to build its own space station after the ISS shuts down).

China has announced in the past that 2024 will be the target date of china’s first moonwalk. Although unspecified, China has in the past declared that the building of a lunar base was a crucial step to eventual Mars and further exploration of the solar system.

In 2013, China’s Chang’e 3 became the first spacecraft to soft-land on the Moon since The Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976. 

In 2019, Chang’e 4, China’s first lunar rover, successfully landed on the far side of the Moon.  This was a historic first by any nation.

In 2020, China launched its Chang’e 5 and successfully returned lunar soil and rock samples from the Moon to Earth.  Only China, the former Soviet Union, and the United States have ever accomplished this feat.

In 2020, China also launched Tianwen-1, a robotic mission to Mars.  The spacecraft at nearly five tons, consists of an orbiter, a deployable camera, a lander and a rover.  It is one of the heaviest probe ever launched to Mars and carries 13 scientific instruments.  The orbiter and lander successfully entered Mars orbit in February 2021.  Landing is currently scheduled for May or June 2021. If the landing is successful, the rover will join NASA’s Perseverance rover which successfully touched down on the red planet on February 18th of this year.

This list of accomplishments, demonstrate China’s ability to quickly develop and build out its space program; and this despite a total exclusionary ban on participation with Nasa or any Nasa lead international efforts.  China was able after 10 years to catch up with the advanced human spaceflight programs of Russia and the United States, virtually eliminating their 50 years advance leads.

More importantly for the United States, the announcement of this joint venture by Russia and China of their planned lunar outpost highlights the troubling trajectory of US leadership in the sphere of space exploration.  A direct read through of the world’s current and future geopolitical balance of power can be seen in this new shift towards a new Chinese-Russian moment.  As in politics and international relations, so too in the area of space exploration.

Since the end of Apollo, the United States have maintained a continuous and commanding lead in the field of space exploration.  It dominated not only the sciences and technologies that allowed for space exploration, but also in its decisive leadership position vis a vis the direction of the world-wide effort in human spaceflight and space exploration. 

The international space station (or ISS) is the preeminent example of this leadership.  Conceived originally in a 1998 memorandum of understanding between Nasa and Roscosmos; the ISS was created as a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada). This new cooperative model allowed for both cost sharing of a very expensive scientific endeavor, as well as giving the US a valuable political tool for diplomatic dialogue.

Unfortunately, the United States, who pioneered the international cooperation model with the building of the ISS space station, in recent years, have increasingly linked such cooperative international enterprises to the protection of its own internal domestic military, economic, and technological interests.  The obvious result is that US leadership in the sphere of international cooperation on space exploration has steadily degraded as US-centric policies have increasingly alienated international partners.

Russia, despite chronic lack of resources and underfunding, nevertheless refused to sign the US-led Artemis Accord last year for countries that wanted to participate in Nasa’s proposed lunar exploration initiative. 

Artemis, like all US space initiatives since 2011, would of course have barred Chinese automatically from participation. Despite growing criticism from the scientific community, the United States continue to vigorously enforce its ethically questionable policy of trying to exclude 1.4 Billion people from their aspiration to participate in the international effort in space exploration. 

the United States discriminative space policies have thus continue to exclude and alienate some of the largest space programs in the world outside of the US.  The justification for such exclusionary treatment is specious, and these policies demonstrably do not work.  What they have managed to accomplish is to push aside major potential contributors and partners to the international effort to jointly explore space; and instead promulgated a multipolar regime where countries like China and Russia are incentivized to develop their own space programs and assume independent leadership. China has developed so quickly, it’s space program has effectively caught up to the US’s 50 year lead in space technology and accomplishments in under a decade. 

This move by Russia and China to jointly establish a lunar outpost is Russia’s public acknowledgement that China has become a viable alternative to partnering with NASA and the United States.  Moreover, this new Sino-Russian program is presented as an international cooperative venture open to “all nations”; and is thus a direct repudiation of the United States’ increasingly unilateral, restrictive and US-centric space program.  This development should be of no surprise to anyone.  The United States laid the groundwork in 2011 with its counter-productive but politically popular anti-Chinese Wolf Amendment to exclude China from all participation in space exploration. Policy inertial and domestic political consideration will doubtless force the US to continue down this exclusionary path, despite its demonstrated failure.  If what the United States wanted was a new space race, then it has given itself one. The prize will be the solar system, and the outcome is anybody’s guess.