China steps toward moon

The race back to the moon begins. This time we are racing China. China's moon orbiting mission takes step forward Thu Dec 29, 2005 8:24 AM ET173 BEIJING (Reuters) - China's plans to send a spacecraft around the moon have reached a new stage, with the unmanned orbiter and rocket entering production and testing, China's top aerospace official said on Thursday. Luan Enjie, commander of China's "round the moon" project, said the Chang'e 1 Lunar Orbiter and a launch rocket are being assembled and tested, and the launch site and command system are also taking shape, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Luan said the craft is still on schedule to be launched in 2007. The unmanned lunar orbiter is part of China's plan to eventually land astronauts -- called "taikonauts" by the Chinese government -- on the moon before 2020. "Taikong" is the Mandarin Chinese word for outerspace. "Our technical staff have solved many crucial technical problems by attacking technological focal points, assembling systems and conducting a range of experiments", Xinhua said in the report on preparations. Planning for China's lunar exploration project has been underway since early 2004. China launched its first man into space in 2003, and in October 2005 it sent another spacecraft carrying two men into orbit for five days. Another manned orbit is planned for 2007. In the United States, the Bush administration announced a $104 billion plan in September to return Americans to the moon by 2018. Its Apollo program carried the first humans to the moon in 1969. Japan has also announced plans to land a person on the moon by 2025. Update: December 31, 2005 New York Times Editorial NASA's Predicament NASA is headed into the next year with ambitious goals and no assurance that it will get the money needed to carry them out. With large deficits looming in the space shuttle accounts, there is some danger that the space agency could work itself into a familiar corner by trying to do too much with too little, a sure-fire recipe for disaster. Under existing plans, the creaky shuttles are supposed to keep flying until 2010, with all flights except one devoted to completing the construction of the International Space Station, which is limping along, half-finished, some 240 miles overhead. Then NASA will rush to complete a successor to the shuttle - called the crew exploration vehicle - by 2012 and use it to send astronauts to the Moon by 2018. The rub is that NASA needs some $3 billion more than previously projected to fly an additional 18 shuttle flights to complete the station and a 19th to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Unless the White House or Congress sees fit to pony up the needed money in coming fiscal years, NASA will have to make deep cuts in some programs. The agency got a big lift from Congress this month when large bipartisan majorities passed an authorization bill that instructed NASA to engage in a broad range of activities and suggested that NASA be given increased funds, reaching a total of $17.9 billion in fiscal year 2007 and $18.7 billion in fiscal year 2008. For the first time, Congress clearly and explicitly endorsed the Vision for Space Exploration, which was announced by President Bush in January 2004, and directed NASA to plan for a permanent base on the Moon as a steppingstone toward a human mission to Mars. Yet it also tried to ensure that NASA would pursue a broad range of studies beyond the president's exploration plan. The bill requires that at least 15 percent of the money spent for research on the space station go to studies not related to the exploration programs. That seems consistent with a recent National Academy of Sciences report that complained that NASA was jettisoning fundamental research in the biological and physical sciences and focusing too narrowly on studies that could further the president's exploration goals. But authorization bills do not actually provide money. The real test will come when President Bush submits his budget proposal for fiscal year 2007 in February, and Congressional appropriations committees decide how much money they are willing to put up. If it is significantly less than NASA needs for its assigned tasks, the agency and Congress will need to curtail some of them, lest NASA fall into the old trap of cutting corners and jeopardizing safety. From our perspective, the costly shuttle and the space-station complex look more expendable than pathfinding robotic probes of the solar system and a transition to new manned space vehicles.