A Pakistani astronaut at the Chinese space station is not only unusual. It is China occupying US power vacuum

In the coming years, the Chinese Space Station Tiangong You will receive your first crew of another nation, Pakistan. Although it will be a short -term mission, it represents a cycle change: China opening to other countries, while the United States closes.

The agreement. China and Pakistan They signed a cooperation agreement on Friday To train Pakistani astronauts and perform the first international missions to the Chinese Space Station Tiangong.

China and Pakistan will dedicate a year from May to select Pakistani astronauts, who will be trained in China before joining their counterparts in the neighboring country in the Orbital Laboratory for short -term missions.

Chinese-Pakistan ties. Pakistan was one of the first countries to recognize the People’s Republic of China in 1950. The two nations have continued to strengthen ties since then, both economically as in the military and technological: according to the CIA, China even helped develop Pakistan’s nuclear program in the 80s.

In recent years, Pakistan has sought to improve his spatial capabilities by resorting to the help of his neighbors. In May, it was one of the countries that placed experiments aboard the Chang’e-6 lunar probe, which ended up turning China into The first country to recover successfully Soil samples of the hidden face of the moon.

Which symbolizes tiangong. China decided to develop its own space station after the United States prohibited Any direct collaboration between NASA and the Chinese Space Agency (CNSA), preventing its participation in the International Space Station.

After trying two prototypes (Tiangong-1 between 2011 and 2018 and Tiangong-2 between 2016 and 2019), China launched the first module of its permanent space station in 2021. The Tiangong Space Station has three modules and is uninterruptedly inhabited Since 2022, with astronaut rotation missions, first, every three months, and then, every six.

The twilight of the ISS. With 16 pressurized modules (the oldest, 26 years old), the International Space Station has long been the maximum exponent of cooperation between countries. But Structural fatigue begins to be a problem and maintenance investments have been increasing.

The official plan (Elon Musk has his own) is to keep the ISS operational until 2030 and then tow it to a safe place where to let it disintegrate by entering the atmosphere. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, wants to have its own space station, and NASA trusts that the ISS is replaced by a commercial stations plethora.

The future of the low orbit. There are few companies that are developing commercial space stations to offer space tourism services, experiments in microgravity and, ultimately, cover the hole that the ISS will leave from 2030: Axiom Space, Blue Origin, Voyager Space and Airbus…

But neither does it lack ambition to China in the extensions planned for its space station, Tiangong, which in the coming years will double the number of modules to six And it will begin to accommodate, as we have seen, astronauts from other countries. Another next milestone will be the launch Xuntian Space Telescopescheduled for 2026. It will share the same orbit as the station (400 km altitude) and may be coupled to it for maintenance and improvement tasks.

China occupies power vacuum. When NASA definitely abandons the low terrestrial orbit (or delegate it to its commercial partners), China will be there to occupy the void, opening to other countries to accommodate its astronauts, taking advantage of a abandonment of functions in international cooperation.

It will not be the first time that China occupies a space that the United States leaves free. It has occurred on the Moon, ignored by NASA for a long time from the Apollo missions, occasion that the Chinese space agency took the opportunity to achieve symbolic milestones such as alunizar on the hidden satellite face and bring the first soil samples.

Cycle change. With NASA receiving instructions to conquer Mars after Elon Musk convinced Donald Trump that the moon is a distraction, the NASA Artemis missions They are questioned. Now China has an opportunity.

Not only to establish the “De facto International Space Station” in the low terrestrial orbit, but also a series of milestones that NASA had marked in its calendar of symbolic victories. The First woman who steps on the moon It could be China, if Artemis ends up falling apart. And then the first lunar orbital station? And then the First manned lunar base? If there is a cycle change, China will take advantage of it.

Images | Shujianyang, China Ministry of Foreign Affairs

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