The space race used to have just two competitors, the old Soviet Union and the United States. Stung by Moscow's success in putting the first man, Yuri Gagarin, into space in 1961, President John F Kennedy vowed that America would be the first to put a man on the moon. Eight years later, though the Russians had also landed the first unmanned probe on the lunar service, Apollo 11 made its historic touchdown and the first human foot walked upon the surface of the moon. Those who have decried the vast expense of space exploration in the name of national prestige, are only partly right. An immense amount of new knowledge has come out of the research and execution of virtually all space missions, not least the international space station, which for all the tensions back on earth remains a testimony to both technical and political cooperation. Now the Chinese have become the third nation to land a spacecraft on the moon's surface, 37 years after the moon was last visited. The technological triumph of the lunar module's landing and the deployment of the Jade Rabbit rover cannot be denied. For the Chinese space scientists behind the project, the apparently perfect touchdown and rolling out of the space vehicle with its arrays of probes, including ground-piercing radar, is the culmination of years of hard work. This November commentators said that India had stolen a march on China when it launched its hardly less ambitious Mars probe. But the Chinese were not to be put out. Indeed, there are social media reports that Beijing's space scientists tweeted congratulations to their Indian counterparts. Most of the spectacular and often tragic failures in space, such as the 2003 destruction of the space shuttle Colombia, have been caused, to one degree or another, by outside pressures to get on with a mission. The launch program for the Chinese moon probe was already planned. To all appearances, Beijing stuck to the schedule doggedly and did not seek the speed up anything by cutting potentially dangerous corners. Just as the Beijing Olympics were a masterful demonstration of China's new place in the world, so the lunar mission displays a level of technical savvy and accomplishment that puts Beijing up alongside Washington and Moscow in the exploration of space. The Chinese have made much of the need for the world to work together in space and have also emphasized the importance of its peaceful exploitation. Beijing politicians repeated these sentiments after this week's successful lunar landing. Yet China needs to do a bit more than come up with noble words and the occasional shared space research program. Most conspicuously, Beijing has never been a partner in the International Space Station. The reasons given have been varied, not least that it has its own program for a manned orbital station. But this really rather misses an important point. The ISS is not simply a way for Russia and America along with the other partners, to defray the ferocious cost of the project, at a time of financial stringency. It is also a way of affirming the very sentiments of peace and cooperation in space. Even if Beijing really can afford to got it alone with a space station — and there are arguments that it cannot — the symbolism of joining the ISS, especially now that with the lunar landing it has proved its space credentials, would be overwhelmingly powerful.
