Daily news and analysis.
We keep you informed and inspired.
This is World Today.
Within just a few years, rocks and soil from Mars could land on Earth.
The moon could bear the footprints of Chinese astronauts.
And a vast web of satellites could make rescue missions faster and more precise.
Here and home, which used to be in science fiction, is now part of China's space roadmap.
How close are these ambitions to reality?
And what could they mean for you and me?
Hello and welcome to the panel discussion of World Today.
I'm Do Hongyu in Beijing.
In its space plans for the next five years, China says it'll turn aerospace from a symbol of national strength into a pillar industry that improves lives and promotes industrial development.
One of the central goals is to turn space activities from customized, expensive projects into a market-oriented industry capable of mass production.
The blueprint also emphasizes the building of a large satellite internet constellation expected to support emergency response and connectivity in remote regions.
Deep space exploration remains a key frontier for China's space ambitions.
Building on previous lunar and Mars missions, the new plan calls for expanded exploration efforts deeper into space.
To delve into these goals, we're joined by Professor Quentin Parker, Director of Laboratory for Space Research University of Hong Kong, Associate Professor of Astronomy Zhang Fan with Beijing Normal University and Dr Zhou Mi, Senior Research Fellow with Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.
Welcome to the show, gentlemen.
First, let's start with a quite personal question.
Among all the goals in China's space plans, which one interests you the most?
Let's start with Professor Zhang.
I'm actually more excited about low Earth orbit utilization because of the improvements in the reusable rocket technology.
It will be able to bring down the cost of taking weight into space quite substantially.
That means you can use the extreme conditions in low Earth orbit to do quite exotic manufacturing.
Because there's no air.
There's no air molecules bombarding your system, it's high vacuum, it's low temperature.
All that means you can do something like quantum computing, quantum technology up there.
Quantum systems are extremely afraid of interacting with noises of heat noises and all sorts of other noises.
And the space environment is perfect for those.
And also there's microgravity.
You don't have gravity acting on your system.
Then, you know, materials form differently.
So that might open up the door to quite fascinating materials becoming available to humans in the near future.
So that's the one I'm looking forward to, although it's not technically very sort of sexy in terms of exploration.
So a very unique environment for tech research.
Going to you, Professor Parker.
Among all China's space plans for the next five years, which one interests you the most?
Oh, that's a very good question, because A they're all extremely interesting as far as I'm concerned.
I think, as an astrophysicist by trade, the China Space Station telescope that's going to be launched is the most interesting professionally in terms of what it can do, because it's like a two-meter UV optical telescope, but with a field of view 300 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope, which has a 23-meter mirror.
So it's like the Hubble on steroids.
So that'll be able to survey the universe at unprecedented resolutions.
So that's really exciting.
Apart from that, you know my own university.
We had several missions, uh space missions, one on changa seven.
So this november uh, we have a wide field optical telescope landing on the lunar shackleton crater rim, we hope in the near the lunar south pole, and with that we're going to take some iconic imagery color images of the galactic plane.
We hope so.
That's the only mission that has any american involvement.
By the way, it's the international lunar observatory association of hawaii's partners with the lsr.
So that's very exciting for me personally because it's our mission.
Then we're also on tianwan 3.
Actually, at the china space day coming up on april 24th, there'll be the formal announcement of the international payloads and we've been selected as one of the international payloads, along with um COSPA in France and Shenzhen University, just over the border from us in Shenzhen.
And so that's a really exciting mission.
It's sort of a 400 kilometer low Martian orbit looking at terrain mapping and hyperspectral imaging for resource mapping.
So they're really exciting things from a personal perspective and from the perspective of my university.
But broader than that, you know, you'll have a current uh mission, tianwan 2, going to a comet and an asteroid, and that's well on its way and that'll be exciting in terms of the science it can do and they're leveraging the spacecraft to do more than one thing, you know.
And we're not just going to go to a comet, we're also going to go to an asteroid, and so That's very ambitious.
But I think China has shown that its ambitions are being met by actual deliverables.
I mean, that's the other amazing thing, whether it's, you know, the Chang'e 6 far side lunar sample return.
Amazing success as a kind of bootstrap mission from Chang'e 5 in case it failed.
So they re-scoped it to do the far side of the moon.
They set up the relay satellite and that's all brilliant.
So, in fact, there's a cornucopia. of plans and missions to choose from.
And I think who decides which is the most interesting depends on your personal interests, because I'm interested in all of them, frankly.
Yeah.
Then what about you, Dr. Zhou?
Well, I think that deep space is really a very fascinating area.
We are going to experience some kind of phenomena we are not having on the Earth.
So we know that there are so many inventions that come from the space, like the diapers or other kind of things.
I think that is a real example for us to know that what we can do to try to deal with the daily lives in different ways.
Well, I mean, Elon Musk is one of the, in my understanding is a very important person to warn us that we cannot just relay everything for one planet.
So the deep space...
And also maybe in the future, the travel will inspire the human to just trying to alternative choices to have a better ability to deal with these uncertainties.
So these kind of things really are very promising in my understanding, but maybe not just in the short term.
So I will say that China is very open in these areas.
So, like what we are now doing for the deep space exploration or experiment, we are not just limited to ourselves.
We welcome the messages, the participation from all the interesting groups were trying to do the cooperation with us.
So this is a kind of a collaboration, not just for one country, one nation, or one kind of people.
We really want to collect the ideas, wisdoms from different people.
And in my understanding, it's very promising for us to deal with the problems.
So in the deep Space errors there are so many new things we can invent, we can use from the Earth, like some of the artificial intelligence.
Maybe in the future some materials or a biology experiment medicines, people's health and also something to do with pharmaceutical errors.
So there are so many things that we can do. deal with in a quite different and special environment.
Yes, deep space exploration is a critical issue for human beings, as Dr. Zhou said.
It is also a key frontier for China's space ambitions.
The chief designer of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, said that China will bring back samples from Mars around 2030.
So, Professor Zhang, why Mars?
The first important thing is the bragging rights.
It's interplanetary.
The Moon is a satellite of Earth, so you're not outside of the Earth's planetary system.
When you go to Mars, on the other hand, you're actually visiting another planet, like Orbis the Sun.
But going there and taking samples back, you're basically showing you have the capability to go there and come back to be an interplanetary species.
So that's first.
Secondly, scientific value-wise, Mars used to have an ocean.
So there's the potential for life, or at least the fossils, the vestiges of life on Mars.
And so, in terms of you know, interesting biology, you going there and taking sample, if you discover a different form of life, that would be quite revolutionary.
Because you know, you learn so so much on how chemicals behave in a manner that can function properly in the biological system.
And if you understand a sort of alternative way of doing things, then maybe new medicines in the future, new sort of bio-like machineries are all in the future.
So the potential payoff from that expedition is also quite significant.
Professor Zhang, we've already got samples from the moon.
How different is the Mars mission?
I mean, can we see it as another version or higher version of getting samples from the moon?
Or are they very, very different?
It's actually like you said.
It's a scaled up, substantially scaled up version of the lunar mission.
So the mission profile is very similar. you send two missions up there.
One is a lander and the sender that actually goes onto the surface.
The other is the orbiter and return module.
So once the lander and the sender, the sender picks up the symbol, send it back into orbit.
So this orbiter and return module will pick it up and relay it back onto Earth.
So this is the same setup that the Chang'e 6 mission used.
However, You know, because Mars is so far away, sort of everything is different.
You need much more powerful rockets.
So this time you'll be to launch five rockets being used.
And then the mission duration is so long, six to nine months.
And in an environment that's exposed to severe radiation, you're not protected by the Earth's magnetic field anymore.
So everything on board, the chips, the electronics, they have to be protected against severe space radiation.
So that's a whole different kind of worm.
And then the sheer distance poses another problem, because you know light radio signals, they will need minutes, tens of minutes, to reach Earth from Mars.
That means you can't really control anything up there remotely, sort of just in time.
Everything has to be autonomous, you know, decisions have to be made by those probes themselves.
So there is an element of AI in that sort of but not necessarily the AI way we know.
That is sort of a large language model but more sort of expert machine type of things that does things on its own.
So basically, everything is different, although it piece back together into something like a similar mission profile.
Very detailed explanation.
Professor Parker, what are some of the major challenges to accomplish the mission to get samples from Mars?
Yeah, it's incredibly technologically challenging.
It's a towering challenge actually, because you have to master pretty much huge numbers of different capabilities all simultaneously.
You know, as China is now emerged as a mature space power, I would suggest some people say oh, it's emerging, it's emerging.
I'm saying well, As far as I'm concerned, China has already emerged, given all its track record in the last five years in particular.
So the things that you have to navigate is the interplanetary navigation itself.
You need to be able to have a precision orbital entry and descent and landing safely.
Then you've got autonomous operations on the surface of Mars.
You've got things all to be done automatically, the drilling and the sampling.
And then, of course, if you had, you know, you can have miniaturized small laboratories.
It's been done before.
So yes, I agree with it, with Dr Zhao, that for detailed, deep analysis you need to bring the samples home back to Earth in proper big, extensive labs.
We have a wide range of equipment you can use, rather than just what you can limitlessly put on a small spacecraft.
So yes, that is very important to be able to bring samples home.
But to do that, you've got to then ascend your body from Mars.
Then you've got to then dock up with your rendezvous capsule that's going to take you back to Earth orbit et cetera, and then descend back to Earth again.
So soft landing, no damage.
There's so many potential points of failure all along that towering challenge that you say well, it's a very, very significant thing if it can be done successfully.
And I think with the only country in the world that's brought back lunar rock from the far side of the moon.
I think that China has a better chance than most in pulling it off.
It is next level.
It's next level.
But I think that China will be ready.
Dr. Zhou, I believe that getting samples from Mars is not the final purpose.
So what will China do with the rock source soil from Mars?
And What does that mean to us and maybe our descendants?
Well, in my understanding maybe I'm not an expert in these areas, but in my guess that we are trying to have the ability at first to understand the environment in Mars, because without understanding we are not able to make further decisions
And based on that decisions, maybe you know some kind of understanding about the scientific research and the environment in Mars.
We may be able to try to design some plans to you know to have a better existing abilities in the Mars.
I mean, maybe at first we're not able to send the people directly to that place, but we need some, you know, maybe to send some robots to that planet and make it one of the very important laboratory for a different kind of science, research.
And if possible, like Professor John has just mentioned, whether we can find some of this evidence that there were some kind of lives in the Mars, what kind of forms maybe, and it may be possible for us to trying to adjust ourselves to the abilities, to living on the Mars.
It is a long run, but I don't think it will not just just in the books.
In my understanding, I will see that people really are able to deal with the situation in Mars because they also have the atmosphere.
They also have different kinds of resources.
I don't think that for the first samples we are able to collect the rocks, but at least we have the dust.
We can try to put some of these ideas in Mars.
But it is very contradictory in my understanding.
The first step is whether we do have the abilities to do that.
And the second is whether we really want to do that.
And the third one how can we just deal with cross planetaries connections, about the civilizations we all, we already proposed the civilization of the human kind, but if it's another planet, everything will be quite different.
So if we're putting uh, you know, the longer term, like for the living on the mars, i don't think that we they can still depending on the, on the transportation or logistics from the earth.
So they do have their independent abilities to survive.
This is a really long way for us to do.
But China is not the only country that is eyeing on Mars.
NASA and Europe also plan to get something there.
Professor Parker, is China able to beat them in the race?
You know, this talk of a race and of beating this or that or the next thing, that's all very well.
And it sells newspapers, you know, and it helps get funding.
Perhaps if you've got to beat them, are you going to give me funding now?
I've got to accelerate my program.
You know, I'm not actually sure that China really looks at it quite in the same way as as other major powers do.
I think they basically say, well, this is our timeline.
This is what we're going to do.
We're going to do everything really carefully, plan everything meticulously, test everything judiciously and then get the mission going.
And that's a timeline that's dictated by all those factors, not by some overarching imperative to win.
So I think China's already winning just by doing things in a way it's doing.
So I don't actually personally like to look upon it as a win or lose or a race.
I like to look upon it as all nations that have missions to the moon or to Mars or into deep space and to the Jovian planets or whatever, as forwarding mankind's knowledge of space on our planetary systems for the betterment, on our understanding of where we came from, where we might be going to, where we might have to live one day, and all these things for mankind as a whole.
And I think that's something if you read through the paperwork that China's put out there on its plans and its missions and its white papers, et cetera.
It talks about that.
It talks about international collaboration as being important.
It talks about pushing forward the frontiers of human knowledge and science in a much more, I would say, collaborative way.
So I don't like this, you know, us and them.
I, like you know, let's collaborate where we can compete if we must, and join hands if that's possible.
That's my philosophy.
Talking about the collaborative work toward deep space.
China is demonstrating the construction of an international lunar research station.
Professor Parker, how will this station promote international cooperation in aerospace?
I mean, there is the Artemis mission, and Artemis has managed to sign up a lot more countries than the International Lunar Research Station has, and I would say a lot more powerful countries.
But that's just, I think, geopolitics and reflects that more than anything else.
But I think China just needs to stick to its guns and remain open.
I mean, given everything that's happening right now And given that countries like United Arab Emirates and Thailand have actually got a foot in both camps, I think you're going to see, perhaps in the next year or two, people not putting all eggs in one basket in terms of being able to have activity and participation in major lunar missions.
So I wouldn't be surprised in the next few years as the plans for the International Lunar Research Station led by China principally with Russia and other countries, some BRICS countries could become more popular going forward.
But I think the key for me would be to leave the door open.
Don't have to close the door off to international collaboration even if it comes in late.
Leave the door open to get the expertise and the differences of experience and knowledge you know and funding, even from other countries, to participate.
So I think being flexible and agile, being responsive to geopolitical trends and the way the world is rapidly changing, is smart.
And if China can do that, then I think it's to the good of everybody.
Okay, keep the door open.
The door open.
Yeah.
At the end of the day, I believe that many of our listeners have this question in mind.
And let's go to Dr. Zhou and Professor Zhang, please.
How might the discoveries from the moon translate into benefits for people's daily lives on Earth?
Dr. Zhou, let's start with you.
Well, in my understanding, that is not only about some kind of products.
So when we're looking at technology development or kind of exploration in another planet or satellite,
And I think that ability is to deliver the people, deliver the rockets to that place and come back safely.
Way and make it quicker, make it more precisely, to use energy in a better way is a kind of technology improvement.
And these kinds of things can be also used for, like your, cross continental transportations or logistics, which is really important for us to deal with the, you know, the very large areas of transportation.
I think that some kind of astronauts, when they are used as diapers, as I just mentioned, can be also transferred into the daily use for the babies.
So these kinds of things really are, in my understanding, a kind of collaboration together with the technology development.
The third one, in my understanding, is about the imagination, the boundary of the imagination.
When the people are thinking what they can do in the future, like we are now facing so many changes coming from the artificial intelligence or the technology development.
Some people may worry about the future.
Maybe they are not so sure about what are the levels they can reach.
So with this kind of unlimited outreach, different areas in different places.
I think that people may have some hope that the future life is still promising.
We can try to break down the war and try to explore the further areas.
So I would say that kind of experiment is not just be limited in the findings on the planet, on the moons or something else.
It's a kind of systematical way for us to have better abilities and a better imagination.
Maybe reaching to mysteries can give us more sense of certainties.
Then, Professor Zhang, what do you think?
Right, I concur with Dr. Zhou's assessment.
There will be lots of spin-offs and stuff like that.
So in general this kind of space mission, they're perfect testbeds and first applications for sort of more exotic technologies that have emerged, but it is so far sort of not cost-effective enough to be rolled out to the general public.
Then the extremes in quality and low weight and durability robustness, demand of the space missions, especially things like going to the moon, gives you this place where you test and demonstrate your capability, get the best PR and also sort of have the first sort of return money.
You know, somebody's paying you to do this.
So companies can push those technologies further into the future that will eventually emerge in people's lives.
So there is an estimate of every dollar that NASA's you get things like $7 or $8 back in general.
So that's the general thing.
Moon specifically, so there are a lot of resources on the moon.
People talk about helium-3 that's deposited by solar wind because of the Earth's magnetic field.
It doesn't get to Earth that well.
So that could potentially become a fuel for nuclear fusion, should the technology development for fusion go that direction.
And then there's also longer term issue of the moon becoming an intermediate way station for deeper space accelerations, for even sort of going to mine the asteroids, you know, for minerals and stuff.
And lastly, most importantly, more immediately, the moon is a perfect place to do astronomy.
Because of all the noises coming from human activities.
You need a large body to shield you from that.
So if you go to the backside of the moon, you can do a lot better astronomy there.
And because of all the internet constellation things near low Earth's orbits, doing astronomy on Earth is becoming increasingly difficult.
So at some stage, you know, the moon will become an indispensable place to do future science.
Thank you all for your in-depth analysis.
Let's take a short break.
Coming back, we'll continue our discussion.
Hello, my name is Alessandro Golombievski Teixeira.
I'm a professor of public policy management at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
I am a great listener of The World Today.
In my opinion, The World Today is one of the best China radio programs.
In The World Today, we can get the best news and analysis in what is happening now in the world.
So please come to join us.
Welcome back.
You're listening to the panel discussion of World Today with me, Dou Hongyu.
We've been unfolding China's space roadmap for the next five years.
Let's continue our discussion.
And apart from deep space exploration, China is also deploying something in space that may change our life on Earth.
That's a large satellite internet.
But now China has had already a very strong on-orbit satellite presence.
China has over 640 remote sensing satellites for civil use on orbit.
That ranks the second in the world.
And the country's Beidou navigation satellite system is operating 50 satellites in orbit.
Professor Parker, how will this new large satellite internet make a difference?
Well, in principle, it is an excellent question.
It will make a really important difference, especially if this is distributed globally and to developing countries in Southeast Asia and Africa and South America in particular, not just servicing the domestic market of China.
That's, I think, where the capacity could be and where the monetization and commercial return could be, because I think China would be able to compete in financial terms well with Starlink.
That's all very well, all of this incredible infrastructure and the tens of thousands of satellites.
And in fact, Elon Musk was talking about a million satellites going up.
And you look at the launch capacity of SpaceX over the last five years in particular, compare that to everybody else, including China.
And you see there's a huge difference in their launches.
And that's because they've got reusable rockets.
And this is something that China is actively working towards.
And it will need that technology.
It'll need an equivalent of the Falcon X, et cetera, if it's to be able to compete in that arena.
That's fantastic.
And it's great for the commercialization of the new space economy is what it is all about.
That's the commercialization of low Earth orbit in particular.
That's fantastic.
And you know, the World Economic Forum and Morgan Stanley Bank have predicted that the new space economy could be worth almost two trillion US dollars by the middle of the next decade.
Now, that 2035 point is interesting because that's actually about the same earliest prediction for when something called the Kessler syndrome could happen.
Now, what is that you're saying?
Oh, it sounds like a viral infection.
Well, it is.
It kind of is.
Analogously, it's like the infection of low earth orbit by space debris.
People don't really pay attention to this issue, they don't really care about it.
They take all our internet and and remote sensing data and everything for granted, without realizing there's an existential threat right now to the ongoing sustainability of the entire low earth orbit ecosystem.
Now listeners may have heard of the shenzhou 20 and 21 saga, where a small piece of space debris, much less than a centimeter, hit the um the window of the shenzhou 20 capsule and rendered it unsafe to return to earth with humans on board.
So that was that kind of event where you've got a 1 billion RMB capsule rendered inoperative effectively for sats, for taikonauts, due to a tiny, worthless piece of space debris that hit that window by chance.
And so that focused, I think, the minds like a laser in China about well, we've got to do something about this.
I mean a lot of the recent Shenzhou missions were putting extra shielding outside the China Space Station just to protect it from space debris.
But this one event has really realized.
People realize that if we don't solve this problem and it's not an easy problem to solve then this 18 trillion new space ecosystem disappears almost overnight.
Over a period of a few days, you'll have a what I call a cascading catastrophic collapse of every space asset in low Earth orbit.
That's between, say, 400 kilometers and 2000 kilometers above the surface of the Earth.
Every satellite, every space station, every space telescope, everything gets destroyed in a cascading wave of debris where, you know, two satellites hit each other, create a huge debris field.
That debris field goes in every direction at high speed and hits into another satellite, that creates another debris, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
You can understand it.
And so, you know, the nations need to cooperate together.
It's in everybody's best interest, from China to Russia, to America, to Europe and in India and Japan and all the other space powers, to really get to grips with this problem and solve it.
You know, we're running a space sustainability conference in Hong Kong in May, actually bringing together many nations to talk about this very issue, including the leaders from the the Chinese debris program and people from the UK and France, and all over America as well, to come to try to talk about some of these important issues.
So that, for me, is the most important thing about satellite internet deployment and sending up satellites with data centers or sending up satellites with energy generation in space.
All these grandiose and massive ideas presupposes there's actually an ecosystem there that you can operate in.
So if we don't take care of that ecosystem, it's game over.
Now, I don't want to scare people, you know, but the fact of the matter is we really need to get our heads together and have global cooperation to, you know, to solve this issue, or else it'll solve itself for us.
Game over.
And then let's go back to our daily life again.
Dr Joe, what tangible real life benefits will this new satellite net bring to people on this planet?
Well uh, i'm not quite sure about, you know, whether we can have some kind of new functions, but i think that at least we are able to have a faster speech and a better coverage.
So, as the you know professor has just mentioned that, you know, the satellites are really giving us many convenience.
The communists are coming from the different demand.
Maybe in the past we are only limited in the way of navigation.
But now, in the future, we have better requirement for the better connections, no matter where we are.
So China has very strong abilities in the 5G infrastructure networks.
Well, for the next stage, i heard that you know from the government to report they are talking about the 6g uh you know telecommunication so the telecommunication is another kind of topics because beta has uh you know used to have the function of the two ways communication not just the gaming signals to the users but also to give some uh feedback from the users so this kind of networks will be more uh you know transfer from the two dimensions patterns into our three dimensions patterns that will be much more much more interesting and much more complicated so in this regard i would say you know we have a better connecting with the iot the internet of things to connect everything into our bigger and much stronger networks which make it possible for for so many new applications to be created and to be uh to be launched so i would say that based on this kind of new network we may able to to have a better volume for the different kind of experiments we know that in the recent years china is uh one of the experimental countries to accommodate so many new technologies so this technology come here to fund the scenarios and trying to find some of their own space so if we are able to provide such a big a huge network space for the uh for the different companies i would i think it's a much more able or attracting for the different companies to come here to to also uh enjoy or explore some of the possible ways of experiment and that is really are able to give us more opportunities like to create more employment to create more value-added propulsion and based on that kind of abilities and and the capacities maybe china can also contribute more to the countries who are trying to connect with us, like for the Belt and Road Initiative, we have the Silk Road for the internet, for the digital connections and the cooperation.
So there may be more possibilities for us to create a different kind of possibilities.
Despite all these benefits, we talked about Building and running a large satellite internet constellation.
Sounds like a huge, systematic project.
So, Professor Zhang, what needs to be done to form that constellation?
Well, the most important thing, as Professor Parker has already mentioned, is to be able to reuse your rocket.
Essentially, it's very expensive launching from Earth.
You're fighting against strong gravity, and then There's the sick atmosphere you need to puncture through.
So currently the reason why SpaceX could do the Starlink is because their launch cost is below US3000 per kilogram.
That is not the stage where China is at right now.
So, however, right now China is going full speed on developing these rockets.
Both the state sector and the private companies are launching a huge number of tests.
For example, in 2026, I count 13 sort of new rocket launches.
So there was the Zhuqiu-3.
Just a while ago, there will be iSpace launches.
So those are very capable, sort of reusable rockets if they're successful.
And then the state sector just in March.
So there was the Long March being tested.
Because of the roughness of the sea and the fact that this is the very first test, they don't want to sort of blow up the barge trying to catch the rocket.
So they didn't actually fully land the rocket.
The rocket sort of landed in the ocean right next to the ship.
However, it's pretty much successful sort of recovery already.
I think it's safe to say that China already has at least one rocket, and a very powerful one at that, that can be reused.
That's looking, you know, quite good.
And then other things like professor parker mentioned.
You really need to think about how to avoid collisions, because once you have all different constellations, they need to talk to each other.
Professor parker mentioned spacex, so the satellites.
They need to do huge number of maneuvers to avoid space debris.
They also maneuver to avoid hitting other satellites because it has to be an automated process because of the number of such maneuvers, They have this attitude that you don't have to do anything.
We don't tell you where our satellites are.
We just do the dodging.
You just stay put and all will be fine.
But once you have all sorts of satellites from all different companies zooming past each other, all trying to do this, then you have the situation where two people it's like two people meeting in the hallway.
They move left together, they move right together and then end up hitting anyways.
That kind of thing sort of a collaborative work, sort of at least international regulation is to go ahead properly before too many launches happen.
That, i think, is quite important too.
Earlier professor parker mentioned that elon musk talked about 1 million satellites up there, and the european space agency estimated that there will be around a hundred thousand satellites circulating our planet by 2030.
So, Professor Parker, is there a risk of a traffic jam up there?
And how do countries like China and the US agree on who moves where to avoid a crash?
Yes, I mean, this is I alluded to this earlier.
And indeed the you know there are regulations now where responsible spacefaring powers have agreed that anything that they put up now will be able to bring itself down to the orbit after its useful life is finished.
So that's something that's agreed.
That's not really the issue.
Issue is that's all very well, but we're putting up a lot more now than is coming down.
And so the actual density, the number density of satellites in that low Earth orbit ecosystem is increasing very rapidly.
And every time there is a collision.
And you know, just recently, I think for the first time, China warned NASA of a of a potential conjunction of two satellites, when normally it's the other way around.
So I think that China's capabilities are improving in terms of monitoring uh assets in space you know, the ones that you can actually measure things greater than, um you know, 10 centimeters or so that you can actually monitor using ground-based radars, etc.
And improving their modeling and improving their database.
It's the trouble is that, um the databases aren't openly available and shared by every jurisdiction, so you don't have the deep knowledge you need.
I think china's planning to look into having a database.
You know, we in my city we're looking to become a global space sustainability hub for the world under an international NGO, say.
That will help to coordinate and to solve this problem.
You know, the United Nations has been involved in this for years through the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space COPUS, and they've developed long term sustainability guidelines.
But the trouble is they're only as good as the weakest link of compliance.
And if nations comply mostly, but not when it doesn't suit them, you know.
And who's taking responsibility and where does the blame lie for all the debris that's up there now?
You know, there's over 150 million pieces of debris smaller than about a centimeter.
We model but we can't actually measure or find most of them.
You know, and it's these things that hit the the the, the window of shenzhou 20, and if you you know some of the earlier space shuttle missions from the 80s, you know they had, you know, almost a window is destroyed by small flecks of paint etc.
And just a few years ago there was a piece of debris went through the robot arm in the International Space Station.
You see, the issue that people need to understand is that in space, in low Earth orbit, typical objects are moving at eight kilometers per second.
Just figure that, eight kilometers per second.
And if you're going to collide with a piece of an object moving the other direction eight kilometers per second, you've got a closing speed of 16 kilometers per second.
Now there's a very simple scientific uh physics equation called the kinetic energy equation, which is e.
Energy is a half m.
V squared m is mass, so in this case it's tiny.
V is velocity in kilometers per second, and that is enormous.
And then you square it, multiply all those numbers together, you get the energy, and so a small particle can have the explosive power of a grenade.
So when you have a small particle hitting a satellite, it can create catastrophic destruction depending.
And so this is the issue that everybody's trying to grapple with.
There's lots of talk, There's not really tremendous amount of coordinated action.
Various bodies are moving that way.
We've got space law.
We've got the United Nations.
We've got, you know, agreements in principle.
But actually getting it all to work in a way that you can.
You know it sort of comes down to, I think trust, really trust, transparency and space domain situational awareness.
You know, there are three critical factors.
It's space traffic management, like as a previous speaker mentioned, about knowing where your assets are and everybody knows, so that if it's going to be a conjunction or a close encounter, you can maneuver in the right way rather than having a dancer.
Okay, we're always going to move to the left and you always move to the right, in an orbital direction, as it were, if that makes sense.
And then it's about, you know, space situation awareness.
So you know everything that's up there and you could monitor it and measure it and improve the orbits.
And then it's something called space debris remediation.
That is getting rid of stuff.
Now, the smart move is to get rid of the big derelicts.
You know, these defunct satellites are still up there hanging around and they're very large, some of them many tons.
If you actually remove that, either put it much higher into a parking orbit or bring it down to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, then you're taking out the potential for that huge satellite to become an enormous debris field.
Because if it was hit by another satellite, it could create hundreds of thousands of pieces of debris and add to the risks and threat of the Kessler syndrome happening.
So bring down those big things as quickly as possible and then worry about the smaller stuff after you got rid of all the big stuff.
That's defunct.
I think that's a key thing for me.
And so you know it's all about cooperation, real true cooperation, data sharing trust, transparency.
Combined global responsibility of all serious spacefaring nations.
I think that is what's required.
If we've got a standard chance to protect that ecosystem for all these wonderful things that we're doing remote sensing
Cooperation and trust.
So what is needed on our mother planet is also needed in space.
100%.
Yeah.
In the following five years, China is going to change the role of aerospace in the country's development, according to the 15th Five-Year Plan.
China is shifting aerospace into a market-driven, mass-producible industry.
Dr. Zhou, why would China make such a change?
Well, in my understanding, that change of this attitude is based on the fact that aerospace is kind of a very important potential and flourish field.
So it's not just supported by the government funds and driven by a large kind of efforts by the nation.
They can be possible to have a better outcome and profits by the private sectors.
So we found that some of the practices have already been there and that is proved to be profitable.
So we want to introduce more elements in this market.
Well, the second reason in my understanding is that China is always trying to open our market.
We are always trying to reduce the barriers and restrictions in different sectors.
We opened the manufacturing for all the foreign investors.
And I think that is one of the few areas which are in the past was dominated by the state-owned companies.
But now I think that time has arrived, It is possible for us to open this market and trying to have the better abilities and better speed for development in this sector.
But I agree with Professor Park about the ideas of the trust.
In such kind of era, if we are introducing more private sectors, it is much more difficult for these companies to to raise some consensus about the directions for movement, because all the companies have different requirements, different kinds of interesting areas and maybe it's not so easy for them to coordinate between them, compared with the cooperation between the governments.
I mean, all these things will happen in the future.
We are not just trying to stop that.
Other sectors, for the space sectors it is a little bit more risky because all the satellites are above us, above all of us.
So if they are falling, maybe they will cause some damage for the peoples, for the houses, for different areas also a problem that we haven't found right now.
And in the future maybe there will also be some kind of controlled by the hackers to this super large networks in the future.
Maybe all these things are unknown, but for Chinese government I would say that they really want to give some rights for the private sectors to explore about ways for developing in this very important and potential sector.
Then what will be the challenges in making sure that China can make this shift in terms of aerospace?
Because China is trying to make the field of aerospace into a pillar industry, a key engine for economic growth.
But how mature are our technologies, Professor Zhang?
And what breakthroughs are expected during the next five years?
We probably don't need the next five years.
I'm expecting to see something work right in this year or next.
As I said, in February, I think it was on the 11th.
The Long March 10A has already pretty much succeeded in its recovery.
It actually went to space.
So it's rocket-burned back to Earth.
It's very similar to what you experience from a proper launch.
You go through the sound barrier and all that.
And then the Long March 12, it failed the first time around, but it's the first test.
And this year, next, they may do the next round and it may succeed.
And Juche 3, also another one that just fell short of the full proper lending last time and they will improve on that.
And then there's the Space Pioneer, iSpace launches in the near future.
Some of them will succeed.
And the key issue, of course, is to develop the capability to go into space cost effectively.
And for that to happen, as you mentioned, there will be the key challenges, because the space sector has always been sort of a national team playground.
You know, it's always public funding.
So for private companies to come in, you really need the public sector, the existing infrastructure, to open up its capabilities.
And the new sort of directives have laid the foundation for that.
For example, now you have this funding from sort of a state sector, sort of funds with a longer time horizon, not pushing you to quickly develop something and go public, do an IPO, stuff like that.
So that's really good for fostering innovation.
And then the transfer of people.
You know people trained in the Chinese state sector space program.
They're very safety conscious, they're very competent.
They can move now to these private companies.
Also, Even more importantly, the testing facilities, for example, that the state sector has is now fully open.
Well, pretty much open to the private sector.
And that's important because if you try to learn from your mistakes, your costs pile up really quickly.
And now having those available and, of course, the ability to source mature components from the state sector and also to compete in the state sector contracts.
Like going to the space station gives cash flow a healthy boost, increasing the income, reducing the outcome.
That will ensure they can stay around for a long time, have sufficient runway to bring the cost down eventually.
And when we talk about space as a pillar industry, it means jobs.
What kinds of new jobs will appear in the next five years that don't really exist today?
Dr. Zhou, please.
Well, it's hard to predict about the jobs.
So maybe in my understanding, if you are trying to transfer the technology from the space to the ground, we need some kind of experiment analysis.
These analysis are based on the possible findings in the different places, like from the moon, from the Mars.
If they are finding some kind of elements or a kind of elements combination.
We have to do some to try to analyze whether this kind of things can be used for some materials, maybe used on Mars or on the moons, or maybe some of them can be transported to the Earth.
And these were some data analysis for this kind of new material.
And second, I mean we will have to have a better ability to support all the transformation.
When I talk about the connections from the ground to the space.
So there will be a large demand on the vast potential areas.
And the people may be wondering about whether they can use how can they use this system, the new kind of applications?
They have to explain to the people about that.
So there will be some kind of assistance in this regard to help the transformation just from the ground areas to the interaction between the ground and the space.
So I would say there will be many potentials for the development.
And we also have to deal with the recycle problems, about the reuse problems, about the different materials.
You know, changes for the rockets, for the satellites, for for the lenders, for different equipments.
These kind of new things are really dependent on the people's work.
So I assume that there will be much more new jobs we can expect.
And finally, let's wrap up our discussion with another personal and brief question.
If everything goes perfectly by 2030, what's the one thing you personally are most excited to see?
For example, maybe a live video call from Mars orbit.
That's my answer.
And Professor Parker, let's start.
I think is going to be a live video call from a human from Mars by 2030.
I think if the ecosystem is still sufficiently welcoming to our assets, that'll be a big achievement.
And I'm hoping for me it would be that the world has come together by 2030 to recognize the issues and collaborate honestly, together with stiff compliance and regulation, enforcing the operational activities in low earth orbit in particular.
That would be a massive achievement.
If we can get our power, space powers, together to to agree to a clear path to, to security, to safety and to sustainability, and that is the most important thing for me.
Everything else we've talked about depends on it, And the other thing, just going back to the previous question, is about policy.
All this commercialization activity.
You know, in the Greater Bay Area we had, you know, governments giving 17 policy points supporting the local economies in a GBA for aerospace.
And that's a really fantastic thing.
And China did 32 odd policy things and Hong Kong needs to follow suit.
So I think it's all to do with the policies and global policies, too.
So that's where I want to see the most progress.
An exciting thing would be if that actually happened.
Professor Zhang, what about you?
Right.
So the plan is for China to land humans on the moon by 2030.
So that's a timeline.
For that timeline, I would like to see that happen.
And then so that opens the door for the International Lunar Research Station, for which we're planning on suggesting some experiments.
So that's something that I'm personally quite looking forward to.
Finally, Dr. Joe by 2030, what's the one thing you personally are the most excited to see?
So I assume if we are able to find some evidence from Mars about the lives in the past and if possible we can try to analyze what are the reasons that they had the lives and how can they survive that environment.
I think that will create a very huge part of discovery and research.
OK, thank you all for your professional and interesting sharing.
Professor Quentin Parker, Director of Laboratory for Space Research, University of Hong Kong.
Associate Professor of Astronomy Zhang Fan with Beijing Normal University.
And Dr Zhou Mi, Senior Research Fellow with Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.
That's all for this edition of World Today.
To listen to this episode again or to catch up on our previous episodes.
You can download our podcast by searching World Today.
Or you can follow our ex-account on CGTN Radio.
Thank you so much for listening.
Bye for now.
