Dramatic headlines regaled the space community this spring, some published by newspapers that ought to know better. “Russia and China building Moon base!” they shouted, and “Russia quits International Space Station!” The truth, as usual, is more mundane, but no less interesting. Here we assess the state of play between ...
Dramatic headlines regaled the space community this spring, some published by newspapers that ought to know better. “Russia and China building Moon base!” they shouted, and “Russia quits International Space Station!” The truth, as usual, is more mundane, but no less interesting. Here we assess the state of play between Russia and China, their lunar and other intentions, cooperation projects in train; and whether this really is the division of the space world into a bipolar domain with Russia and China on one side and the United States, Europe and the rest on the other.
To use police vernacular, Russian-Chinese relationships in the space field have ‘form’. They had a bright start in the 1950s when the Soviet Union supplied China with its early rocket designs, but the Chinese always suspected - rightly it seems - that they were sent quite obsolete blueprints. The relationship ended in tears with the great split of 1960, but left an architectural legacy in the form of the design and layout of the early Jiuquan cosmodrome.
Lunar axisRussia and China could still be described, at this stage, as flirting with the other, both somewhat nervously
This relationship was relatively static until the announcement in March 2021 of an agreement to build a lunar base. This was most likely prompted by the planned American return to the Moon, the Gateway project and then the Artemis Accords. Unlike the International Space Station (ISS), which was designed and operated by a partnership of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada, the United States made it plain from the start that this was an American design and operation. Other countries could offer components, which might or might not be accepted (Europe builds the Orion service module, for example), but it would be NASA-supervised and directed throughout. Having been a co-equal on the ISS, such subordination was not acceptable to a self-respecting space power like Russia, especially the first-ever space-faring nation.
Russia never made a secret of its ultimate desire to reach and land on the Moon. Its new piloted spaceship, Orel, was designed from the start with this purpose in mind, along with the new heavy-lift launcher, the Soyuz 5, with a target date of a lunar landing in 2030. Indeed, under the Sirius programme, simulated lunar missions in Orel have already taken place.
Russian Orbital Station
Russia was indeed considering its own space station, but for pragmatic reasons (the ISS ageing) and it was never intended to be a political statement. Russia had long experience of running more than one manned spaceflight at a time (Soyuz 18B and 19 in 1975); and more than one space station at a time (Mir and Salyut 7 in the 1980s; Mir and ISS from 1998-2001), which over-excited headline writers must have overlooked. Russia was, in any case, still preparing two modules for launch to the ISS, the long-awaited Nauka science module and the new Prichal docking port, hardly signs of an imminent or hurried departure.
