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China’s military is rapidly building a large force of space weapons, including sophisticated anti-satellite missiles, lasers, jammers, orbiting killer robots and cyber tools, designed to “blind and deafen” the American military in a future war, the U.S. military is warning. New details of Beijing’s growing space arms arsenal were revealed the Pentagon’s latest annual report to Congress on the Chinese military, released publicly on Tuesday. “The [People’s Liberation Army] continues to acquire and develop a range of counter-space capabilities and related technologies, including kinetic-kill missiles, ground-based lasers, and orbiting space robots, as well as expanding space surveillance capabilities, which can...

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Unexceptional: China becomes the third country to land a spacecraft on the moon in preparation for a manned visit. Meanwhile, U.S. astronauts have to ride Russian spacecraft to fix toilets on the International Space Station. Tourists visiting the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where one of America´s retired space shuttles now resides, were no doubt able to see news reports of the landing of China´s first lunar vehicle, a solar-powered rover, on the surface of the moon. The landing of the rover 37 years after the last such mission by the Soviet Luna 24 sample-return voyage in 1976 makes China...

Exceptionalism: While the American space program is in a museum, Beijing orbits a nearly 9-ton space station module. Soon men will return to the moon, but they will likely be speaking Chinese. While America was scanning the skies waiting for an aging satellite to fall to earth, China was looking to the skies and seeing its future. On Thursday, Beijing launched into space aboard a Long March 2F rocket a space station module weighing 8.5 metric tons that will serve as a prototype for a 60-ton Chinese space lab to be in orbit by 2020. Americans may yawn and say...

A special lecture began Thursday morning, given by a teacher aboard China's space module Tiangong-1 to students on Earth. Female astronaut Wang Yaping, one of the three crew members of Shenzhou-10 spacecraft, greeted about 330 primary and middle school students at a Beijing high school, through a live video feed system. "Hello, everyone. I am Wang Yaping. I will host the lecture today," she said, smiling towards the camera, on board of the space module Tiangong-1. Wang and her crew members set off to the space aboard the Shenzhou-10 spacecraft on June 11 and the spacecraft docked with the Tiangong-1...

China's lunar probe, the Chang'e I crashed on to the surface of the moon on Sunday, marking an end to the first lunar mission by the country. The landing served as a way to pave the way for future missions and gave Chinese scientists a dress rehearsal for planning and executing future missions. In 2011, the country is planning to send a lunar rover to the moon with the Chang'e II probe. The mission will involve a crash landing on to the lunar surface.      The current landing gave an opportunity for the China National Space Administration to get...

A Chinese lunar probe has crashed into the moon in what Beijing has called a controlled collision. The Chang'e 1 lunar satellite hit the moon's surface at 1613 local time (0813 GMT) at the end of a 16-month moon-mapping mission. China launched the spacecraft in late October 2007 on a mission to survey the entire surface of the moon. China's ever-more ambitious space programme includes plans for a space station and landing a man on the moon.

BEIJING (AFP) – China will launch a space module next year and carry out the nation's first space docking in 2011 as a step towards its goal of building a space station, state media said Sunday. The Tiangong-1, or "Heavenly Palace-1" is scheduled for launch in late 2010 and will dock with a Shenzhou-8 spacecraft early the following year, Xinhua news agency said, citing officials with China's space programme. "The module, named Tiangong-1, is designed to provide a 'safe room' for Chinese astronauts to live and conduct scientific research in zero gravity," the report said. "Weighing about 8.5 tonnes, Tiangong-1...

In late September, China's third manned space mission went off without a hitch. The Shenzhou-7 is now safely in orbit. Close by is the BX-1 "companion satellite" which was attached to Shenzhou-7 and later deployed via a simple spring mechanism. This satellite weighs between 30 and 40 kilograms, and it simply orbits around Shenzhou-7, sending back over a thousand images of Shenzhou-7 in the process. While Western space experts may be divided over the exact purpose of the BX-1 mission, it is clear that China has every intention of driving its dynamic "dual use" space agenda as far as it...

Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the Moon, has issued a stark warning that America must invest now in the space agency Nasa, or surrender leadership of space exploration to Russia and China. In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Aldrin revealed that he intends to lobby Barack Obama and John McCain, the two US presidential candidates, in an effort to ensure they find sufficient funds for Nasa's goal to establish a permanent base on the Moon and then send a manned mission to Mars.

Beijing is looking to take the lead in an increasingly militaristic space race, and it wants Washington to keep out. China plans to launch more than 10 spaceships and satellites this year, Agence France Presse has reported. This will be a record number of spacecraft for China, coming after 16 launches over the past two years. The announcement, made by China Academy of Space Technology chief Yang Baohua, comes at a time when tension is high over the military use of space. The United States announced late last week that it was preparing to shoot down a defunct reconnaissance satellite...

It has been one year since China took aim on its own nearly one-ton meteorological satellite by way of an anti-satellite (ASAT). That January 11, 2007 target practice spewed out a huge cloud of clutter - debris that remains a troublesome problem for operating satellites, as well as the International Space Station. Odds are that somebody’s satellite is due for a whacking - if it hasn’t already taken place.

Two orbiting U.S. spacecraft were forced to change course to avoid being damaged by the thousands of pieces of space debris produced after China carried out an anti-satellite weapon test one year ago today. The maneuvering, ordered by ground controllers and conducted several months ater the test, is an example of lingering problems caused by China's Jan. 11, 2007, missile firing in a bold demonstration of space weaponry against a weather satellite, said Air Force Brig. Gen. Ted Kresge, director of air, space and information operations at the Air Force Space Command in Colorado. Gen. Kresge, a F-15 figher pilot,...

China's military has long harbored ambitions of dominating space, as last year's satellite-targeting exercise showed. Now comes news that Chinese engineers may be much further along than previously thought in achieving one of their major goals: building a military space plane. On Dec. 11, an anonymous blogger posted a photo of a new Chinese space plane on a Chinese Web site devoted to military issues. The photo -- the first and only of the plane -- shows a small spacecraft with heat shielding similar to that on U.S. and Russian space shuttles. The Chinese characters for "Shenlong," or "Divine Dragon,"...

A chance December 11, 2007 release of a photo on a Chinese website has led to a rare unofficial “declassification” of a new Chinese unmanned test space plane.[1] Designated the “Shenlong,” or Divine Dragon, this small aircraft was shown suspended from the fuselage of a Xian H-6 bomber and launch aircraft. So far there has been no official Chinese government, PLA or Chinese corporate or space program related disclosure about this program. However, from this photo and other Chinese sources, it is possible to conclude that the Shenlong constitutes a second Chinese air-launched space-launch vehicle (SLV) program, but for the...

This file photo released by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Nov. 26, 2007 shows China's first picture of the moon captured by Chang'e-1, China's first lunar orbiter. (Xinhua Photo) BEIJING, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- China published the first picture of the moon captured by Chang'e-1, the country's first lunar probe, on Monday, marking the full success of its lunar probe project. The white and black picture, in a glass frame, was unveiled by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center. It shows a rough moon surface scattered with big or small round pits. The area...

HONG KONG, Oct. 23 (AP) - (Kyodo)—A Chinese submarine will send test signals that could change the course of a satellite when China launches its first moon orbiter, as part of the country's effort to develop space war technology, a human rights watchdog said Tuesday. The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said two survey ships are deployed in the South Pacific Ocean and South Atlantic Ocean to send signals to maneuver the lunar exploration satellite, expected to be launched Wednesday. At the same time, a nuclear-powered submarine will send simulated signals to the satellite as a test, it...

TOKYO - Japan claims its project is the biggest since Apollo. China says it is readying its probes to study the lunar surface to plan a landing. With Asia's biggest powers set to launch their first unmanned lunar missions — possibly as early as next month — the countdown has begun in the hottest space race since the United States beat the Soviet Union to the moon nearly four decades ago. Japan's space agency said last week that its SELENE lunar satellite is on track for a Sept. 13 launch, following years of delay as engineers struggled to fix mechanical...

China plans to survey all of the moon's surface before eventually bringing bits of it back to Earth, state media reported Friday. A full moon is visible in this 2005 view above the Earth's horizon. China plans to survey all of the moon's surface before eventually bringing bits of the planet back to Earth. [File] "We would like to survey every inch of the moon's surface," Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of the China's moon exploration project, was quoted as saying on the website of Chinese News Service. Ouyang, speaking at a conference in southwestern China this week, said China's lunar...

A satellite bearing the largest payload of plant and fungi seeds ever launched by China was flown into space on Sunday for a reported two-week stay in orbit before being sent on a guided return to Earth. The launch of the Shijian-8 spacecraft occurred early Saturday from the Jiuquan space center in northwest China's Gansu province. The Long March 2C rocket delivered the satellite into an orbit stretching from a low point of 111 miles to a high point of 277 miles, with an inclination of 63 degrees. Shijian-8 carries at least 2,000 types of seed samples from a variety...