Of the two big breakthroughs in space exploration in the past week, by far the greater technological achievement was the fly-past by the US New Horizons probe of Ultima Thule, some 4bn miles from Earth. But in terms of geopolitics, China’s landing of the Chang’e 4 probe on the far side of the moon was the more significant. It establishes China as a space power — and brings new competition into what has long been largely a two-horse space race between the US and Russia.
過去一週人類在太空探索方面實現了兩大突破，就技術成就而言領先得多的是美國「新視野號」(New Horizons)探測器飛越距地球約40億英里的小行星「天涯海角」(Ultima Thule)。但就地緣政治而言，中國「嫦娥四號」探測器著陸月球背面的意義更爲重大。它確立了中國作爲太空大國的地位，並向長期以來是美俄雙強之爭的太空競賽引入了新的競爭者。
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