China on Monday dismissed it as a blatant disregard for a warning from a NASA chief that China could “take over” the moon “as part of a military plan, saying it had been urging the building of an international community in space. China has accelerated its space program over the past decade, focusing on lunar exploration. China first arrived on the moon without a crew in 2013 and expects to launch rockets strong enough to send spacecraft to the moon by the end of this decade.”We should be very concerned that China will come to the moon and say: ‘Ours now and stay outside’,” NASA Secretary Bill Nelson told in an interview published on Saturday.
A senior US space official said China’s space program was military and that China had shared ideas and expertise with others.”This is not the first time that the head of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration has ignored the facts and spoken out against China,” said Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry.
“The US side has always been launching a campaign of defamation against China’s common and rational space efforts, and China is strongly opposed to these baseless allegations.” China has been promoting the building of a shared human future in space and opposes its use of weapons in any space race, he said. NASA, under its Artemis program, plans to send a team of workers around the moon by 2024 and create crews living near the lunar south pole by 2025.China is planning a non-labor trip to the summit at some point in the next decade.
