Originally posted by the Voice of America.
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China Joins Race to Mine Moon for Resources

Adam Xu

   China's space program celebrated a major accomplishment this week when
   its Chang'e 5 lunar probe mission safely landed on the moon. The
   landing Tuesday brought Beijing a step closer to becoming the third
   country in the world to retrieve geological samples from the moon, but
   more important, analysts say, is that China is accruing experience for
   more ambitious plans.

   The goal of this mission is to extract 2 kilograms of sample from the
   moon's northern Mons Rümker region and bring it back to the Earth. If
   the mission succeeds, China will join the U.S. and the former Soviet
   Union as the only countries to have collected lunar samples.

   Analysts say the complexity of Chang'e 5's unmanned exploration mission
   shows the great progress of China's space capabilities, and, if
   successful, will likely help Beijing realize future plans for manned
   moon landings and the construction of bases.

   Namrata Goswami, an Indian defense expert and now a space policy and
   geopolitical scholar living in the U.S., told VOA that Chang'e 5 would
   allow China to advance "their understanding of rendezvous and docking,
   especially when they are planning on human landing."

   While reaching the moon remains a significant accomplishment for any
   space program, Beijing's space program is still in its early stages and
   is still building experience.

   "They're catching up to where the United States was in the 1960s," said
   Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis and space security
   at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington
   think tank. "The United States has already sent not just probes to the
   moon but humans and returned to the Earth and brought back samples of
   lunar rocks. So China is catching up in that respect, but they're still
   not where the United States is in terms of space technology. But it is
   nevertheless a competition for science."

   Between 1969 and 1972, the U.S. brought back a total of 382 kilograms
   of lunar soil through seven Apollo manned spacecraft missions, six of
   which succeeded. The former Soviet Union used unmanned probes to take
   301 grams of moon soil samples between 1970 and 1976.

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