Illustration showing an astronaut standing on the moon and looking at Earth.
Credit: iStock Photo
China is reportedly planning to build massive space-based infrastructure — comprising a satellite network and lunar ground-based stations — to facilitate quick space travel to the moon and meet national strategic needs.
According to a report by South China Morning Post, researchers from the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) and the Beijing Institute of Spacecraft System Engineering plan to create a network of 30 satellites between the Earth and the Moon, in addition to three lunar stations, to provide real-time communication, navigation, and monitoring services to users across the world.
The project envisions being able to monitor and track moving targets as small as one metre in the cislunar space — the region between the Earth and Luna — in addition to enabling 20 or more travellers to simultaneously communicate with the Blue Planet via video, audio, and images. It also aims to provide accurate positioning, navigation, and timing data during lunar surface operations and Earth-moon flights.
The three-stage plan
According to a study published by the researchers in the journal Chinese Space Science and Technology, construction for said infrastructure would proceed in three stages.
First, researchers plan to put a couple of satellites in elliptical lunar orbits and build a control station on the lunar surface to enable communication with the moon's south pole region and support China's future robotic and crewed moon missions.
In the second stage of the project, the satellite network would be expanded to 10 — in orbit around the moon, the Earth, and at Earth-moon Lagrange points — while a second lunar station would be built. This will enable data transmission rates of up to 5 GB per second, and improve navigation accuracy.
The final stage of the project would further expand the satellite network to 30 and see the construction of a third lunar station. The aim, at this stage, would be to achieve data transmission rates of 10 GB per second and further improve navigation accuracy for lunar surface operations and Earth-moon flights.
The network, once completed, would also be able to track a spacraft across distances of up to 900 million killometres, thereby supporting deep space exploration missions to Jupiter and beyond.
Cislunar space
The report notes that cislunar space has become increasingly relevant in recent years, especially with regard to military activities in space.
The United States Air Force (USAF), for instance, is already developing the Cislunar Highway Patrol System for detection, tracking, and identification of artificial objects at lunar distances (437,000 km from Earth), a tenfold increase over the traditional geostationary detection range (35,785 km).
Civil space agencies in the US, Europe, and Japan are also eyeing similar infrastructure for both scientific exploration and commercial operations on Luna.