The Emergent Space Powers

摘要

China Last year China announced plans to launch a space lab and gather moon samples with rovers by 2017. The country also performed its first space docking, an essential skill for a manned orbital station. China's centralized power provides an advantage, former NASA astronaut Steven Hawley says: "If the government wants to do it, the government will make it happen." RUSSIA Russia's space agency has sent regular manned Soyuz missions to the International Space Station and launched RadioAstron, a space telescope with 10,000 times Hubble's resolution. But disasters, including the 2011 explosion of a space freighter and the recent failure of a Martian moon probe, have tainted the program's standing.