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.
The Chinese probe landed at the South Pole-Aitken basin, the oldest, widest and deepest crater on the face of the moon that is never seen from Earth. The main challenge was communicating with the probe through a relay satellite. The feat is not technologically dazzling — Nasa could have done it many years ago had it wished to — but it was a clear declaration of intent.
There was no live television coverage of the landing in China. But this reserve belies the ambitions of its publicly avowed space programme. China only sent its first astronaut into space in 2003. Yet by next year it expects Beidou, its rival to the Global Positioning System, to cover the planet. It is planning to have a third fully operational space station by 2022, and to have astronauts in a lunar base by the end of the decade. The Chang’e 4 mission already includes evaluating opportunities for lunar mining and cultivation — pointing to Beijing’s ambitions to commercialise space, and highlighting the need to update international regulation of outer space.