Dragon Week: Orbiting Dragons

Dean Cheng / January 18, 2011

At the 2009 Sino-American summit, President Obama committed the US to dispatching the head of NASA to China, in return for a reciprocal visit by his “appropriate Chinese counterpart,” i.e., a player to be named later. A year later, NASA Administrator Bolden has visited China (although it remains unclear to what end), yet there is no sign that an “appropriate Chinese counterpart” has even been designated.

This should be a warning sign, since China’s presence in space has been steadily improving. In 2010, China launched a record 15 satellites, the first time since the Cold War that any state has matched the rate of American launches in a year. In 2011, China will launch the Tiangong-1, a spacelab, and engage in docking maneuvers with their Shenzhou spacecraft. Meanwhile, China is striving to complete its indigenous Beidou navigation satellite system, a rival to the American GPS system, and is steadily outpacing Europe’s moribund Galileo program. And China’s network of Yaogan remote sensing satellites, capable of providing essential military intelligence, is also progressively expanding. (more…)