USA, about to lose supremacy in space. “The Chinese are advancing very quickly,” warns a group of American advocacy

A new report warns that the US risks losing supremacy in a new space race in favor of China, a country in a rapid and constant growth in the space sector, and Beijing could pass the space race over the next 5 to 10 years, Agerpres Live.

The hard warning for Washington comes less than two weeks after hearing of the US Senate Commission has discussed the increasing probability that Beijing will defeat Washington in a race to bring people to the Moon. During these discussions, former NASA administrator, Jim Bidenstine, told the senators that “the United States is very unlikely to exceed the china designed calendar”, unless the recent NASA budget discounts are canceled.

“China sets the rhythm”

The new report, entitled “Redshift”, was published on Tuesday (September 16) by the commercial space federation – a group of advocacy that supports investments in the US commercial industry. It details how China's spatial infrastructure and the ability to explore the solar system has grown rapidly in the last decade and does not show slowing.

The 112 -page document contains the latest information about the various resources and spatial missions of China, including the new space station, its growing satellites and its plans to visit and colonize the Moon.

“China is not just in a hurry to recover the lost land – but also establishes the rhythm, it is disturbing and sometimes redefines how leadership looks and above the earth,” the researchers wrote in the report. “China's spatial ascension – propelled by a disciplined policy, strategic investments and radical technological progress – has fundamentally redesigned the field in which global power is disputed.”

One of the most worrying issues raised by the new report for the US is the possibility that Chinese Taikonauts will reach the Moon before American astronauts. Although NASA's Artemis missions have been repeatedly postponed, partially due to recent starship rocket problems, which is not safe, China continued to reach “major stages” in its plane to send astronauts to the Moon by 2030. These include the mapping of the selenium surface in record detail, the return to the land oversized. Currently, NASA proposes a new aselenization with human crew by 2027.

China also intends to build a fully operational monthly base, equipped with an autonomous nuclear reactor, since 2035. This could help the nation to claim valuable selenium mining materials and give them an advantage to finally send people to Mars, recently reported the space.com.

Another area in which China is likely to dominate is the low orbit of the Earth, thanks to its recently completed Tiangong space station, which will become the only major state space station in operation once the International Space Station (ISS) will be decommissioned at the end of this decade. Currently, NASA has no plans to replace directly ISS, although a number of commercial companies are pursuing plans for their own stations.

China also begins to build its own satellite megaconstolations to compete with the Starlink of Spacex network, which is rapidly expanding. It also intends to build a orbital system for solar energy capture and its own version of the James Webb space telescope in the near future.

Americans are still 5-10 years old

On the ground, China now has six different operational space ports, which will allow the country to rapidly increase the number of missiles it can launch in the coming years.

But perhaps the most alarming point for the US is that the country performs all these impressive tasks simultaneously. In other words, “China lives was Apollo, ISS and was the commercial space simultaneously,” the authors of the report wrote.

The secret of China's recent success is increasing financing, especially for commercial companies, which have received special support from the government to support the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA). For example, the country has invested $ 2.86 billion in its commercial projects last year – more than 17 times more than the $ 164 million spent in 2016, according to the report.

Another important factor was the availability of China to collaborate with other nations to achieve their goals, including Russia, India and Japan. This approach, nicknamed the initiative “Silk Space Road”, allowed China to carry out over 80 projects with international partners, “eroding the influence of the US,” the researchers wrote.

The report of the report, Jonathan Roll, an analyst in spatial policies at the State University of Arizona, was particularly surprised by how quickly China had progressed since he first studied the subject in the early 2020: “I thought I had a pretty good reading about it when I finished postgraduate,” Roll said. “But the fact that almost everything had to be updated or had changed three years later was quite frightening.”

“The United States still has an advance today in many fields of space,” said Dave Cavossa, president of the Federation of Commercial Space flights, for Ars Technica. “But the Chinese advance very quickly and are about to overcome us in the next five to ten years if we do not do something,” he added.