Nasa administrator Michael Griffin has said: “China is capable of sending a manned mission to the Moon within the next decade, if it so wishes”.
It is possible the the first people on the Moon since the Apollo 17
mission in 1972 could be planting a flag with five stars, not 50.
During a visit to London, at BBC News website, Dr Griffin said: “Certainly it is possible that if China wants to put people on the Moon, and if it wishes to do so before the United States, it certainly can. As a matter of technical capability, it absolutely can.”
Chinese officials say: “ There is no plan and no timetable for a Moon landing, and have expressed doubt that one could be made by 2020”.
A recent report by the US consultancy firm, Futron, found other countries were expanding their space capabilities at an astonishing rate, “threatening US space leadership”.
Also, India’s space programme is smaller than China’s, but is making great strides. The South Asian country will launch its Chandrayaan unmanned Moon probe later this year.
Dr Griffin now says: “Even if a new president and a new Congress decided they wanted to shorten the gap between shuttle retirement and Ares and Orion deployment, at this point with water over the dam, even if they were substantially increasing our funding, we would be talking about 2014 as the earliest.”
