China plans to start building a lunar base in about five years, starting with bricks made of moon soil, scientists with ties to the project told the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Ding Lieyun (丁烈雲), a top scientist at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, told local media that the first brick would be made from moon soil during the Chang’e 8 mission around 2028.
NUCLEAR POWER
China has previously said its lunar base would likely be powered by nuclear energy, and would include a lander, hopper, orbiter and rover, all of which would be constructed by the Chang’e 6, 7 and 8 missions.
It was not immediately clear in the interview if the entire base would be built with lunar soil.
“Eventually, building habitation beyond the Earth is essential not only for all humanity’s quest for space exploration, but also for China’s strategic needs as a space power,” Ding told the China Science Daily in a separate interview, according to the SCMP.
The comments came as China held its first major conference in Wuhan to discuss building a manned lunar base, the report said.
China has already sent probes to the moon, built its own space station and is also setting its sights on Mars, as it vies with the US in particular to be the first to gain access to minerals and other resources found away from Earth.
The moon is believed to contain a source of waste-free nuclear energy that could meet global energy demands for 250 years, but experts fear nations might clash over the extraction of potentially hundreds of billions of US dollars of resources.
CHANG’E MISSIONS
Yu Dengyun (于登雲), from the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, provided an updated timeline for the next three Chang’e missions, the SCMP reported.
The plans are as follows: Chang’e 6 would launch in 2025 to collect samples from the far side of the moon, Chang’e 7 would blast off the following year to search for water-ice, while Chang’e 8 should land about two years after that.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS