BEIJING
(AP) - Over a few short months, Japan, China, and India will all have lunar
probes orbiting the moon, sparking talk of a new space race in Asia.
China, for one, takes exception at that characterization. On Thursday, a
top official in its secretive military-backed lunar
explorer program defended
the probe launched last week as an innovation that is part of a future wave of
cooperation, not competition, in outer space.
"It's all peaceful,''
said Pei Zhaoyu, assistant
director of the Lunar Exploration Program Center, when asked whether a space race was on. "The
countries involved in lunar exploration are developing an understanding.
They're evolving a mechanism for cooperation.''
China's launch of
the Chang'e 1 satellite put in motion an
ambitious space exploration
plan, and came just weeks after rival Japan launched
its own moon probe. India plans to send its own lunar probe into space in April.
The three missions
represent a new wave of lunar exploration following those begun in the Cold War
by the United States and former Soviet Union, and another bout in the 1990s
that saw Japan and Western Europe joining the club.
James Oberg, a space consultant in Houston, said the
current glut of lunar missions is less of a space race and more a matter of those countries developing new
technologies at similar rates. All three have lately developed more powerful
booster rockets, along with experience with payloads gleaned from launching
commercial satellites, said Oberg, a veteran of 22 years at NASA Mission
Control.
However, he added that such
missions do offer tangible benefits for a country's business and reputation.
"Doing 'moon probes'
advertises a country's technological level and that's good for high-tech exports,
and for validating the threat-level of its high-tech weapons,'' Oberg said in
recent comments to The Associated Press.
Oberg likened the Chinese
probe, named after a mythical Chinese goddess who flew to the moon Similar, to
the orbiting U.S. moon explorers "Clementine'' and "Prospector''
launched in the 1990s.
In Beijing, Pei told reporters all was well with the satellite, which
is due to move into lunar capture orbit Monday, when it will allow itself to be
caught by the moon's gravity.
"All the systems on
board are currently in excellent condition and the spacecraft is on the
expected trajectory,'' said Pei, who is also
spokesman for the China National Space
Administration - China's version of NASA.
The lunar mission adds
depth to a Chinese space program
that has sent astronauts orbiting around the Earth twice in the past four years
and is a source of great national pride.
Pei dwelt extensively on the technical
aspects of the lunar mission at a news conference that illustrated a growing
openness within the space
program.
Foreign observers were
present at the satellite's Oct. 24 launch from the Xichang
site in the southwestern province of Sichuan, Pei
said. He said data gathered during the yearlong mission would be shared with
scientists from other nations.
China sent its first
satellite into Earth orbit in the 1970s, but the space program only seriously took off in the 1980s, growing apace
with the country's booming economy.
In 2003, China became only
the third country in the world after the United States and Russia to put
its own astronauts into space.
But China also alarmed the
international community in January when it blasted an old
satellite into oblivion with a land-based anti-satellite missile.
Pei dodged a question about the
anti-satellite weapon, but gave the budget for the engineering stage of the
lunar program as $187 million.
"China has always
adhered to the principle of peaceful use of outer space,'' he said. "All goals,
including engineering goals, and scientific goals, are without military
purposes.''
Carried into space by a Long March 3A rocket, the Chang'e 1 satellite is expected to transmit its first photo
back to China in late November.
It will survey
the lunar surface using stereo radar and other tools as a precursor to a
planned landing on the moon's surface in 2012 and a recoverable mission by
2020.
Pei said China was being careful not to
travel territory already covered by the space
programs of Russia, the U.S., Japan and the European Space Agency.
He said that by launching
the probe, China was playing to its science and technology strengths, while
laying the groundwork for future innovations and benefiting the country's
economic and social development _ a reference to the Communist Party's use of
the space program to drum up
patriotism and loyalty.
"China's lunar program
got off to a relatively late start, but we hope to ... try to do something that
no one has done before,'' Pei said.
"We're fully confident
that alongside the progress in our science and technology, our lunar and deep space exploration programs will
advance rapidly from strength to strength,'' he said.
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