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China

The Significance of China's Moon Landing

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
December 16, 2013
Filed under , , ,

A New Site to Explore on the Moon, Paul Spudis, Air & Space
“… we are poised to investigate a new site on the Moon of considerable interest and complexity, one that displays a variety of geological units and processes. The Chang’E 3 lander and Yutu rover can provide many answers to our questions regarding the geological history of this region of the Moon and about lunar history in general. That will be a lot to learn over 3 lunar days (one lunar day equals 14 Earth days of light, sandwiched between 14 days of dark).”
American Exceptionalism and Space Exploration, Paul Spudis
“China on the Moon is not the issue. The issue – and the problem – is that the United States is not on the Moon, nor planning to return there to harvest resources necessary to build and profit from the inevitable transportation system to be built in cislunar space (the area between the Earth and the Moon, where all of our commercial and national space assets reside). American exceptionalism must stay viable and be a strong presence along side China and other nations.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

56 responses to “The Significance of China's Moon Landing”

  1. rb1957 says:
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    “the significance of Cina’s Mooon landing” ?
    the beginning of the end for “Pax Americaus” ?
    certainly we’re long past the end of the beginning.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      There are other options. Now that an increasing number of nations have lunar access capability (and lunar orbit access), the socially mature thing would be a cooperative program where everyone contributes and the results are shared. It’s not as if anyone involved could suddenly turn this into a military advantage — but the science and the economic possibilities are extensive, and still sitting there after all these years, waiting for us to go and learn and profit. Now is the ideal time to start taking advantage of the synergy that would result from an increased number of nations working together to tackle the Moon. The collateral gains alone could justify it, and the things learned will do more to bring us closer to Humans to Mars than anything done to date. All it will really take is for people and nations to start acting like grow-ups and admitting that people in other nations are grown-ups, too.

      • Joe Cooper says:
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        I find it embarrassing and astonishing that we’re posturing so much with China; a trade partner, an important manufacturer and a bond holder.

        Did we not invite the Soviet Union to participate in Apollo? Did our astronauts not shake hands with theirs in orbit? Did we not participate in Mir? Have we not built a wonderful space station together with post-Soviet Russia?

        And yet we cannot even talk with China about the Moon while having two sats above it as we speak?

        Just one more way for Washington to make us look ridiculous.

        • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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          the big difference is that China’s space program is run by its military. the USA and the Soviets both ran Civilian space agencies.

          • Joe Cooper says:
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            Is that a big difference? We have multiple military space agencies and it would be absurd to say there’s no interaction. The DoD heavily affected the Shuttle’s design and the Shuttle has flown DoD missions. Is there a practical difference? Is there some direct military purpose to China landing on the Moon – at least to a greater extent than the United States landing on the Moon?

          • dogstar29 says:
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            The Chinese moon landing has no military significance. it’s purpose is to signal to both the Chinese domestic audience and the world that China has ‘joined the club” of world leaders and is prepared to market world-class aerospace technologies.

          • Ben Russell-Gough says:
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            Yes, it is first and foremost a “tyre-tracks and flags” act.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            oh, interaction, sure. the DOD’s requirements and a plethora of compromises built the shuttle. however, that doesn’t weaken the point that the military isn’t running NASA. that’s the justification for the congressional ban on working with China’s space agency.

          • dogstar29 says:
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            Not true. The Soviet program was always run by the Strategic Rocket Forces. Only recently has the human spaceflight organization migrated away from direct military command.

          • Anonymous says:
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            i don’t think that’s true.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            Almost all of the Russian space “divisions” can be traced directly back to Soviet military “directorates” that were referenced by two- and three-letter labels. Even Sergei Korolev’s work was under direct military control; his political bosses saw him as an ICBM designer first and a spacecraft and LV designer second. In the US Wernher von Braun and all of his associates were similarly under direct military control. In both countries civil space is less dominated by the military now than in the past (and less openly), but it is also given much less money and considered much less important by the governments than ever before.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            my understanding is that the Soviet space program was run by a civilian (at least in name) agency, with heavy military support.

          • savuporo says:
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            Soviet program was fully ran by the army – they would not have launched a Soyuz every week without that kind of manpower. US program was supported by almost exclusively by military contractors. Even now, almost everything NASA sends up is built and launched either by Lockheed, Boeing, ATK – all military contractors. MIL-STD-1553B is still as popular as ever.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            there’s a difference between military support and actually being run by the military.

          • Denniswingo says:
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            SpaceX

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            SpaceX is getting contracts to do military launches, too :p

          • Denniswingo says:
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            …..SpaceX is getting contracts to do military launches, too :p……
            _____________________________

            That does not equate to SpaceX being a FAR military contractor. That is what ULA, Boeing, and Lockheed are.

            Learn the difference. Knowledge is powerful, ignorance is bliss.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            i’d say getting a military contract makes you a military contractor.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            Don’t believe what you read on the label. Both the US and Soviet space programs had military involvement and oversight when they were at the stage that China’s space program is at now, and long after that as well. The “civilian” launch vehicles in both countries were modified military missiles for many years, and a lot of military technology and money has gone into the civilian space programs since then; they probably wouldn’t have survived without that military help. As an example, think about how many times ITAR pops up in news items about the civilian space programs, even today.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            i’m not disagreeing that there was military involvement. i’m aware that the early space programs of both nations launched astronauts on modified ICBMs. the difference is much like the separation of Church and State – there might be cross involvement, but in the USA the Church can’t run the State. in China, the Church (military) is running the State (space program).

          • Joe Cooper says:
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            I’m not convinced this is anything more than a bureaucratic distinction. What relevant difference would there be – to us – if their lunar program was done under a “civilian” program?

            If we shared technology would this distinction prevent it from falling into military hands?

            And without a practical distinction, isn’t it a pretty absurd high horse for the US to be on?

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            if it were done under a civilian program, Congress might be more interested in allowing NASA to cooperate with the Chinese space program.

          • savuporo says:
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            Its also nonexistent high horse. The military contractors in question exert a great degree of indirect control over the space program. Otherwise things like Constellation would not happen.

          • Joe Cooper says:
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            It “exists” when China comes up. Otherwise …

          • Jafafa Hots says:
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            The soviets had manned military space stations with surveillance as their major purpose.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            i know.

          • savuporo says:
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            You are deluding yourself if the prime contractors are not pulling the strings of the space programs.

            Have you looked at how many probes to Mars has LockMart built ?
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wik

            How did they happen to be selected and how does Mars program magically get steady funding ? Because everyone in Congress is super interested about the possibility of PAST life on Mars ?

            Of course.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            what does Lockheed Martin building space probes have to do with the Chinese military running China’s space program?

      • rb1957 says:
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        i quite agree, an International Lunar Station is an obvious goal; however, it won’t be a US Lunar Station, thus a step down (natural though it may be) for the US, from being the preeminent (= dominant) space power to being one of a team. If the US can’t (or doesn’t want to) afford doing it alone, this too is a step down.

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          If it’s a choice between being a member of the team, or not being in the game at all, which looks to be where things are headed, then there’s not much to think about. And to be honest, when you say a step down, a step down from what? 40-year-old accomplishments are something to be proud of, but they are not a determining factor in the current situation.

          • rb1957 says:
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            in the 60s, did the US reach out to anyone to elp with their lunar project ? … no, they did it themselves; they were the undisputed leaders (once they caught up to the USSR). in the 60s they had the will to go it alone (mind you, i don’t think there were many around who could help).
            in the 00s, the US had to pick up the pieces and complete the ISS, and a good thing too! they lead the work, but didn’t go it alone. ok, still the leaders but less so, no? they could do the technical work, contributed much of the funds, but needed funding from others.
            in the future it looks as though the US doesn’t have the will to establish a permanent lunar colony; admittedly the cost is such that it probably needs to be an international effort. however I see the US as participating in that team, possibly not leading it; I expect the US’s share of funding will not buy it the lead seat.
            thus the US’s position in space in the future is less dominant than it was at the end of the 60s; thus a step down.

      • LPHartswick says:
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        If you feel the PRC is a nacent experiment in Jeffersonian Democracy; then this will be wonderful sign of progress. However, if you’ve read any chinese history, this is definitely the canary in the coal mine, and should give you pause.

        • dogstar29 says:
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          Neither is the PRC Communist. It is the world’s second largest economy and in 20 years it may be the largest. if you think we can afford a military confrontation with China you haven’t been to Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, or Korea. or lived through the Cold War. We need better ways to work with other nations without the threat of armed conflict. Collaboration in space is one such strategy.

          • LPHartswick says:
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            You’re right the PRC is no
            longer communist. It is a capitalistic, authoritarian,
            police state that now more closely resembles National Socialism than communism. It restricts the political discourse of its
            people, suppresses a free press, bullies its neighbors, uses its army to
            spy intensively on American companies and governmental agencies for commercial
            advantage, and every 30 or 40 years kills great big batches of its own
            citizens. My goodness, I don’t see why
            we shouldn’t work diligently with them to advance their facility to operate is
            cis lunar space.

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          History is a valuable teacher, but history does not determine the present situation. Your argument can be made for any country, including the US. How many women were burned in Salem for being witches? The obvious response to that is that it has nothing to do with the present; and that, too, applies to China and everyone else. I would much rather see us all concentrating on today and tomorrow, and how to make the world what we want and need it to be. The past is past and we can’t change it. But we can change the future.

          • LPHartswick says:
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            Speaking of the here and now; have you read how China bullies its neighbors with its near monopoly on rare earth metals for geopolitical
            advantage? Trying to compare the burning of a few herbalists by religious zealots 300 years ago to the Cultural Revolution; or to Mao’s letting over a million of his countrymen die from his agrarian reforms is ludicrous. “Passivity is fatal to us. Our goal is to make the enemy passive.” Mao Zedong

          • Jafafa Hots says:
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            Whereas we in the US have NEVER bullied anyone for their resources.
            In the last decade.
            At the cost of untold thousands of lives.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            Mao Zedong died 37 years ago. He, too, is history and has nothing to do with the present.
             
            As for the rare earth metals, if you’re going to attach loaded words like “bully” to a nation serving its own self interest with respect to natural resources, then the US would have to be the biggest bully on the planet. One look at the per capita use of just about any natural resource will show you that Americans acquire and use more per person of many things — from metals to energy to foods — than any other nation. A nation acquiring what it can for its people is not bullying. And taking more than your share is hard to defend, but it’s something that every nation would almost certainly do if it could.
             
            On the other hand, you turned the witch burnings into “a few.”

          • LPHartswick says:
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            Really.

            Salem Witch Trials: 150 accusations; 20 executions; and 4 people died in prison over 300 years ago.

            Mao 1947-1976: 40 million deaths.

            http://necrometrics.com/20c

            Your from Canada right; I’m sure you’d be just as comfortable tucked up along the PRC’s northern border, as ours…right?

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            My point, which I’m obviously not doing very well at putting across, is that we need to put the past behind us, everybody’s past. The conditions of the present and the possibilities of the future are not dictated by the actions of people now long dead — unless we continue to let them be. Also, I think too many people are not giving enough thought to the value, or lack thereof, of information sources. How much of what we read can legitimately be taken as factual?
             
            WWII and the Cold War are long over, and yet many people continue to act as if they weren’t, and have opinions driven by those long past events and others. It’s like they insist that an enemy must be an enemy for ever, and that attitude accomplishes nothing good; quite the opposite. Even those former enemies who are now nations with whom we cooperate daily, like Russia (former USSR), Germany and Japan, are treated by many people as if they were still enemies, never to be trusted and forever the bad guys.
             
            On top of being a contradiction, this attitude works to seriously limit present and future possibilities, and serves only to reduce the safety, welfare and standard of living of all involved, on all sides. Why do we do this to ourselves?
             
            I don’t imagine there’s a single nation on this planet who’s government and/or people haven’t at one time or another done “bad” things, and we need only search their individual histories to find those things (and somehow magically try to separate the accurate histories from those written by the winners). Recent history, however, shows an ever-increasing number of nations, and their people as individuals, discarding their old attitudes with respect to traditional enemies and instead working towards becoming accepted members of the modern, progressive nations. Those nations or groups who are not “growing up” in this fashion seem to have two things in common — they are still driven by ancient hatreds, often either religion- or land-based, and they tend to be despised by the more progressive nations for their actions and their attitudes (Iraq is one of the oldest cultures on Earth, yet how many “friends” does it have today?) (How many “friends” does your average terrorist organization have?).
             
            Nations and their cultures don’t always tend to grow logically and consistently for the better, probably because large numbers of people don’t tend to behave that way, despite what any individual may say or think. Chinese culture is very much older than yours or mine, but that means only that they’ve had time to transition through many more types of social systems, political systems, ideologies, etc. than we have, some for the better, some not. But although these many changes may have some effect on the present and the future, they do not dictate the conditions and attitudes of the present and future. I think the Chinese government and the Chinese people are today both consciously trying to make changes that will make them more stable and more like the western nations, in selected ways. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that we allow them the same opportunities to change and the same encouragement to belong that we would hope to receive from other nations if we were in their place.
             
            Have you ever wondered what the Chinese media and the Chinese web bloggers say about the western countries? Have you ever wondered how accurate what the Chinese people are told about us is? Have you ever wondered whether there’s any difference between their media and ours with respect to prejudices and inaccuracies? Have you ever wondered how much, or how little, difference there actually is between the average Chinese citizen and the average one of us? When it come right down to it, I don’t imagine there’s a whole lot of difference between Joe Public here and there.
             
            I firmly believe we’re collectively at a turning point on planet Earth where we have the opportunity to reshape the world culture into something more beneficial to everybody. It’s not an opportunity that comes along very often; this may even be the first time. I think it would be incredibly stupid to throw that opportunity away because of an insistence on retaining old, no-longer-relevant prejudices. Rather we should be smart enough to recognize an important opportunity when it presents itself and wise enough to make the most of it.
             
            As always, just my opinion, of course.
             
            Thanks for an interesting exchange.

  2. Odyssey2020 says:
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    Yes, it would be great if the U.S. had a lander/rover on the moon.

    Instead we’ve got an orbiter around Saturn, and it’s been there for 10 years. We’ve landed on Titan. We’ve got orbiters orbiting around Mars, I don’t know how many as I’ve lost count. We’ve orbited around Jupiter..and we’ve got another orbiter on the way. We’ve got rovers roving ON MARS, and have had them for over 10 years. We’ve orbited Mercury and Venus. We’ve had flybys of all the outer planets(Uranus, Neptune) and we’ve got a flyby of Pluto in less than 20 months. We’ve built TWO SPACE STATIONS and we almost always have our astronauts occupying the current SPACE STATION. We’ve flown hundreds and hundreds of men and women into space. We’re orbiting the moon NOW. We’ve got commercial companies that can launch rockets into LEO and probably beyond soon. We have a good chance for U.S. commercial companies to launch men and women into space within a decade. We’ve brought comet dust back to earth. We orbited an asteroid..and then landed the orbiter on it lol. We sent two probes into Interstellar space, or will be there soon.

    Oh yeah, we landed on the moon many times, even had men walk and drive cars on the moon OVER FORTY YEARS AGO.

    So congrats to China for doing something that’s very hard to do. China can probably/eventually do all of the above too, it just might take 40 or 50 years. By then, I’m thinking the U.S. will have another huge list of accomplishments to cut, copy, and paste.

    • dogstar29 says:
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      I agree. But China’s goal is not to dominate space, but rather to demonstrate they have “joined the club” of the world’s leading nations.

    • savuporo says:
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      >> We’ve landed on Titan

      Wow, when ? Last one i saw, it was done by ESA

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      it just might take 40 or 50 years.

      I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that we might never know the answer to that. After having accomplished a few more of the basic space activities, I strongly suspect that China, and perhaps India and others, will not spend time and money on repeating what has already been done by others, but rather do missions that haven’t been done by others, or that complement what’s been learned and accompished by others.

      When the science and technology are already common knowledge in certain areas, why spend millions repeating the missions that learned it? And if China, and others, took the route of adding to, rather than repeating, what NASA, ESA and Russia have already done, this could be taken as a clear indication of their position on cooperative space exploration and exploitation.

      Technology has been “shrinking” our world for decades — to everybody’s advantage I think — and I feel it’s long past time for politics and public sentiment to catch up with it.

      • Odyssey2020 says:
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        I don’t know, I think they’re going to copy us, build a space station and try to land men on the moon.

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          I suspect you’re quite right on that, but that’s what I meant by “basic space activities.” We often get hung up on HSF, and Moon and Mars, and overlook all the rest of the space activities.
           
          In planetary science alone there are currently more than enough proposed missions than all of the space-capable nations together could perform in a decade (ignoring flight time) if no two nations were to do any of the same missions. The same is true for developing and testing the science and technologies that we still need for living and working space — for radiation, ECS, vacuum/weightless manufacturing, and all that other stuff.
           
          If NASA doesn’t go ahead with the asteroid retrieval mission, which is looking more likely all the time, then somebody else had better do it because it’s technology and capability that we’re going to need as a species sooner than people seem to think.
           
          And the list goes on. Once any nation becomes capable of putting people into space and landing/taking off from another body, then their real work begins. Even building a station is a task that has many different aspects to it, most of which haven’t really been addressed yet, let alone accomplished.
           
          We can go on as things have been, or nations can start cooperating properly and accomplish much more in much less time. I’m afraid that real progress won’t begin until a lot more people drop this pointless idea that there has to be “a leader.”
           
          Just my opinion, of course.
           

    • Mader Levap says:
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      If China do it, it will be faster than 40-50 years. Both experience and technology is better.

  3. Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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    Time to get a Morpheus lander and RESOLVE space rated. Start with a full cost estimate.

  4. Jonna31 says:
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    This significance of China on the moon? How about “there is none”? Sure it’s an advance for China’s space program, but this is not in any sense of the word a break through. They’re simply the third Nation that has chosen to do this, not the third nation / space program with the capability to do it.

    Landing on the essentially atmosphere-less Moon is one thing. Difficult maybe, but it’s still a very, very far cry from Mars Pathfinder, much less the MERs and MSL. And there is no new science being done either.

    The significance? The same significance as when a new super tall skyscraper opens in Beijing: a lot of head lines, but little substance. There is no parity – or emerging parity – in space programs when the US invents the skycrane and lands this car sized nuclear powered rover on Mars in 2012, and China’s answer to that is an order of magnitude less risky and complicated than Mars Pathfinder, 15 years ago.

    So call me when they do something new.

    • Skinny_Lu says:
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      Great post. Agree with all of it. Now, please send me your number so I can call you when they DO something new, we’ve never done before. It will happen, I guarantee it. Cheers.

    • rb1957 says:
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      sure it not “new” as in no-one has done it before; but it is “new” for China. it is a very important stepping stone for thier program; everyone who does it pretty much reinvents it … sure they’re pretty confident that it’ll work but actually doing it is still something. no-one is saying that China’s program is as capable as the US’s, but it is now demonstratibly more capable than it was yesterday. and so it is significant in showing that another world power is interested in expanding it’s space program, and is achieving steps to show it.

    • Denniswingo says:
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      And there is no new science being done either.

      Excuse me?

      The ground penetrating radar is an amazing science tool for both profiling the depth of the regolith and the subsurface structure of the Moon, AND as a resource mapper.

      We have never done this on the Moon OR Mars.