China plans to land astronauts on the moon by 2030; This is another advance that is increasingly seen as a new space race pitting Asian autocracies against the United States and its democratic allies. The United States plans to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon by the end of 2025.

Lin Xiqiang, deputy director of the China Manned Space Agency, confirmed China’s target at a press conference on Monday, but did not give a specific date. Lin said China was initially gearing up for “a brief stay on the lunar surface and joint human-robot exploration.”

“We have a full human-orbiting space station and human shuttle system,” he said, complete with a selection, training, and support process for new astronauts. Lin said the two-crew-per-year mission schedule was “sufficient to meet our goals.”

The Chinese space agency also announced a new crew to the orbiting space station during the launch, scheduled for Tuesday, and said the station would be expanded. The Tiangong Space Station is said to have been completed in November, when the third part was added.

A fourth module will be added “at an opportune time to expand support for scientific experiments and provide better working and living conditions for the crew,” Lin said.

Launched on Shenzhou 16, the trio will coincide with three astronauts who have been living on the station for a time for the past six months, conducting experiments and assembling equipment inside and outside the ship. The new crew includes a civilian for the first time. All previous crew members were in the People’s Liberation Army, the military wing of the country’s ruling Communist Party.

Gui Haichao, a professor at Beijing’s leading aerospace research institute, will join mission commander Jing Haipeng and spacecraft engineer Zhu Yangzhu as payload specialist. Speaking to the media at the launch pad near the northwest city of Jiuquan, Jing said the mission marks a “new phase of implementation and development” in China’s space program.

“We firmly believe that the spring of China’s space science has come, and we have the determination, confidence and ability to complete the mission decisively,” said Major General Jing, who has made three previous spaceflights.

China’s first manned space mission in 2003 made it the third country to send humans into space, after the former Soviet Union and the United States. China built its own space station after it was kicked out of the International Space Station, largely because the United States objected to China’s space programs’ close ties to the PLA.

Space is increasingly seen as a new arena of competition between the world’s two largest economies and the United States and China, rivals for diplomatic and military influence. Astronauts that NASA will send to the moon by the end of 2025 will target the south pole, which is believed to be filled with permanently shadowed craters filled with frozen water.

Both countries are considering plans to establish permanent crew bases on the moon, which raises questions about rights and interests on the lunar surface. US law severely limits cooperation between the two countries’ space programs, and so far it has been limited to scientific research, although China has said it welcomes foreign cooperation.

In addition to their lunar programs, the US and China have also landed rovers on Mars, and Beijing plans to land a spacecraft on an asteroid, following the US lead. Other countries and organizations are also planning missions to the moon, from India and the United Arab Emirates to Israel and the European Union. Between 1969 and 1972, the United States sent six crewed missions to the moon, three of which involved the use of a manned lunar rover that China says is currently being developed through private sector tenders.

Although America now has more spaceports than China and a much wider network of international and commercial partners, China’s program has been steadily and cautiously implemented, reflecting the country’s tremendous growth in economic power and global influence since the 1980s. developed.