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From the Executive Director

Report from China

August 9 , 2006

Click to enlarge > Louis Friedman, Executive Director

Bill Nye the Science Guy (and Planetary Society Vice President) and I have just returned from Beijng, China.   We attended the major international gathering of space scientists known as COSPAR (the Committee on Space Research, of the International Council of Scientific Unions), at which I presented a proposal for an International Lunar Decade.   China also hosted the meeting of the International Lunar Exploration Working Group (ILEWG), which endorsed the International Lunar Decade, among other programs aimed at fostering cooperation among the many nations now planning missions to explore the Moon.

While in Beijing, we went to a public lecture by China's chief lunar scientist to hundreds of students, a large media contingent, and other interested persons.   The subject was the Chinese lunar program, and Prof. Ouyang Ziyuan gave a 90-minute, soup-to-nuts presentation about solar system science and China's upcoming lunar mission plans.   That in itself wasn't remarkable, but the students' question-and-answer session that followed was. 

In animated questioning, the students raised many provocative subjects:  What will China learn from its mission to the Moon that the Japanese and Indian missions won't? Why can't we cooperate with the U.S. or others?  Why should China do this when there are so many earthly problems for it to solve? Will the data be open to all or is it to be secret?  The questions indicated energy and skepticism.   At the same time, the excitement about China's new space ventures was palpable. 

Click to enlarge > Beijing Planetarium Louis Friedman, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and Ziping Zhang (Education Director of Beijing Planetarium) in front of main entrance of the Planetarium.

Prof Ouyang's replies were patient and thoughtful, although it was clear that he felt the challenge being hurled.  China must, he said, develop itself and advance its own technical and scientific capabilities, cooperatively to be sure, but also independently. China cannot be left out of the enterprises that advance great nations. 

Prof. Ouyang's talk was not the only popular lecture in Beijing that week.   Our own Bill Nye spoke at the Beijing Planetarium to a group of young people about the passion, beauty and joy of space science.  The planetarium there is a magnificent facility, reminiscent in design and impact of the Rose Center Hayden Planetarium in New York.   The Planetary Society and Beijing Planetarium have agreed to cooperate on public information and education programs concerning space exploration. 

Russian and Japanese Plans for Space Exploration

During the international meetings in Beijing, we are heard up some discussion about the Russian space program. Since the end of the Soviet Union, they have been dormant in space exploration and now may be re-awakening to again attempt the Moon and Mars.   They are preparing a mission called Lunar Globe (Glob in Russian) to robotically explore the Moon with an orbiter and with a number of penetrators that would be emplaced around the lunar surface.   And they hint that a human circumlunar mission in a Soyuz capsule might be a step toward taking Russian cosmonauts to the lunar surface.   The Russian "vision for space exploration" is not yet explained, but they seem to be guided by a new determination to be a spacefaring leaders again.  

Their developing Phobos sample return -- Phobos Grunt (soil) -- would announce that "we're back!" Officially, this mission is planned for launch in 2009, the same year as the U.S. Mars Science Laboratory and two years before the European ExoMars.  

All these are major missions of exploration -- despite NASA's insistence on using that word to mean only human spaceflight.    All are leading to Mars sample return – a mission recently taken out of NASA's plans but added to Europe's.  (Europe, flush with success of Huygens at Titan and Mars Express, has signaled its intent to be a major participant is space exploration.)

Japan, with its own recent success of the Hayabusa mission, is also pursuing lunar plans.  Their SELENE lunar orbiter mission has a 14-instrument science payload, including two sub-satellites, and a 15th instrument for the public:  a 3D high-resolution stereo camera that should take great pictures of the Moon and of the Earth.  Japan, like Europe, is waiting as its space station modules are stuck on the ground waiting for the space shuttle, but nonetheless they has developed their own vision for space exploration leading to ever-increasingly capable robotic missions and ultimately landing humans on the Moon

A New, Different, Space Race?

Once, when testifying to a U.S. Senate Committee about international cooperation in space exploration,  Senator Brownbeck asked me if I thought we were in a space race.  I said no: being first was no longer an issue, and that since one of the benefits of space exploration was to bring people together globally, cooperation was now a more dominant force. 

He then questioned me about China:  Were they going to mount a human space program? Were they going to conduct multiple activities in space – science, applications, exploring?  Would they go to the Moon, first with robots and then with astronaut?.   "Yes," was my answer to all.  "And, what would be the U.S. reaction?" he asked.  "Got me," I answered.  

I suddenly realized that the U.S. may not be in the old kind of space race, with China or with anyone else, but that the U.S. would certainly not react by quitting space exploration just as other nations start.   The presence of other nations in space is a motivation for the U.S. Perhaps it creates a new kind of space race, one that includes global cooperation at the same time as global competition.  

This race may be starting right now, as China and Japan are less than a year away from launching major robotic lunar missions.   India is right behind in its preparations to launch a lunar orbiter.   All three countries are developing follow-on lander missions, as well.  The U.S. and, it appears, Russia, have come back with ambitious lunar goals: large robotic orbiters and landers, and returning humans to the Moon.   Italy has just initiated a national lunar program. At least one student project is developing a moon orbiter, and a private initiative has begun to pave the way for an international lunar observatory.  

All of these countries plan national missions, but each is promoting international cooperation in those missions. NASA this year has made specific overtures for international partners in the hitherto national Vision for Space Exploration.  Administrator Griffin is traveling to China this fall to begin talks about space cooperation.

The new lunar missions will be launched despite the fact that 94 spacecraft and 24 people have already been to the Moon.  So why go back?  The Moon is just off-shore, and it is everyone's stepping stone into the solar system to fulfill even grander space-faring ambitions.  Hence, we will all go to the Moon. 

In 2008, at the Beijing Oympics, someone will proclaim, "Let the games begin."  Next year, a de facto International Lunar Decade will begin a different sort of games – with a similar spirit: To go "Citius, Altius, Fortius" (faster, higher, stronger). in the words of the Olympic motto.  The Olympics is a competition, not just conducted as a cooperative endeavor, but enabled through the cooperation.  It is not a single race, but many races, and relatively few participants come with the expectation of actually being first in any of them.   But the competition and the cooperation ennoble all.  This may happen with Moon exploration also, as a race with many participants in which competition and cooperation ennoble all, and different firsts will be accomplished by each.  It will be a different kind of space race.