BEIJING (AP) – China hopes to join an international space station project that already counts leading space powers like the United States and Russia as its members, a government
official said Tuesday.
China takes great pride in its expanding space program and sees it as a way to validate its
claims to be one of the world's leading scientific nations. On Tuesday,
state-run newspapers said China will launch its first lunar probe later this month, just weeks after
regional rival Japan successfully sent a lunar satellite
into orbit.
But China does not participate in the
International Space Station, due in part to
American unease about allowing a communist dictatorship a place aboard.
"We hope to take part in
activities related to the international space
station,"' Li Xueyong, a vice minister of science and technology. "If I am not
mistaken, this program has 16 countries currently involved and we hope to be
the 17th partner."
A reporter had asked
whether China in the future would be more likely to compete or cooperate
with America in space.
Li said China wanted to cooperate with the United States, but gave no specifics.
In 2003, China launched its first
manned space mission, making it the third country to send a human into
orbit on its own, after Russia and the United States.
But China also alarmed the international
community in January when it blasted an
old satellite into oblivion with a land-based anti-satellite missile. It
was the first such test ever conducted by any nation, including the United States and Russia.
That test was widely
criticized for its military implications. A similar rocket could be used to
shoot military satellites out of space, and
create a dangerous haze of space debris.
Beijing insists however that it is
committed to the peaceful use of space – a
stance that Li reiterated on Tuesday.
"The Chinese government has
always pursued a foreign policy of peace and consistently worked for the
peaceful use of outer space," he said during a
briefing about China's development of science and education on the sidelines of
a key Communist Party Congress.
The space station's first section was launched in 1998 and it has
been inhabited continuously since 2000 by Russian, U.S. and European crew mates.
Japan's space
agency said nearly two weeks ago that its lunar probe was in high orbit over the
moon and all was going well as it began a yearlong project to map and study the
lunar surface.
China's Chang'e 1 orbiter will use stereo
cameras and X-ray spectrometers to map three-dimensional images of the lunar
surface and study its dust, Xinhua has reported previously.
"Preparations for the
moon-orbiting project have gone well and the launch will be made at the end of
October," Zhang Qingwei, director of State Commission of Science, Technology
and Industry for National Defense, was quoted as saying Tuesday by the official
Xinhua News Agency.
The regional space rivalry is likely to be joined soon by India, which plans to launch a lunar
probe in April.
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