High-precision satellites had emerged as a focus in modern warfare, with their importance a highlight in Russia’s war on Ukraine where real-time and ultra-detailed images would offer substantial leverage in the battlefield.
Competition for space resources was becoming “increasingly tense”, space exploration faced a shortage of orbital and spectrum resources, and abandoned satellites and rocket debris increased the risk of collisions.
China’s lunar strategy includes its first astronaut landing around 2030 in a programme that counts Russia as a partner. In 2020 China conducted its first lunar sample return mission with Chang’e-5, retrieving samples from the moon’s nearer side.
In June, China landed an uncrewed spacecraft on the far side of the moon, overcoming a key hurdle in its landmark mission to retrieve the world’s first rock and soil samples from the dark lunar hemisphere.
Its space agency has set 2035 as the date by when a “basic station” on the moon’s south pole will be built, with a moon-orbiting space station added by 2045.
