Seven days later, the Chinese side announced a major piece of good news. What kind of joke did the NASA director make?
On the 24th of this month, a major good news came from the mainland's manned space project, according to the introduction of Lin Xiqiang, spokesman of the China Manned Space Project and deputy director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, last year, the lunar landing phase of the manned lunar exploration project has been launched, and the overall goal is to achieve the landing of Chinese on the moon by 2030, and the development and construction of various systems are currently being carried out as planned. This also means that in less than six years, a manned landing on the moon will become a reality. It is undeniable that in recent years, the mainland has made strong development in the field of aerospace and has made many remarkable achievements, which are obvious to the international community. From the mainland's first artificial earth satellite to China's first astronaut into space; from the first successful landing of the first lunar probe to the first Mars probe; from the first "spacewalk" of mainland astronauts to the first time the Chinese entered their own space station. It can be said that every "first time" has witnessed the exploration of China's dream of aerospace, and the surprises brought by every step of China's aerospace are worthy of the expectations of the outside world.
However, at a time when China's space industry is booming and full of surprises, the United States, as a major space power, is trying every means to "stumble" the mainland and maliciously smear and slander China's moon landing. Just seven days before China's announcement of the major space news, that is, on the 17th, when NASA Administrator Nelson attended a hearing in the House of Representatives of the United States Congress, in order to win more budget, he began to hype up the so-called "China space threat theory", deliberately smearing China's moon landing program, claiming that the mainland is "militarizing" the space program. However, what he didn't expect was that in the process of answering the relevant questions of the US congressman, he made a big joke, which attracted a burst of ridicule from public opinion. When asked "what the Chinese do on the far side of the moon", Nelson's answer was that "the far side of the moon is always dark, the Americans don't plan to go there, I don't know why the Chinese want to go."
As soon as this remark came out, many netizens left messages to ridicule, pointing out that the far side of the moon is definitely not always dark, and it is called the "dark side of the moon" because of the synchronous rotation of the moon. In fact, it is not difficult to see from this point that some US politicians and officials no longer need to think about the so-called "China threat theory" in order to pursue their own selfish interests, and their remarks about smearing and slandering China are completely out of their mouths without any evidence. It's just that this time it was "counterattacked" and shot himself in the foot. In fact, in recent years, the United States has fabricated and exaggerated the so-called "China's space threat" and made use of the so-called "China-US space race" as a matter of one or two times. To put it bluntly, it is the so-called "militarization of the space program" in Nielsen's mouth. To this end, Nielsen also warned at the hearing that the United States should successfully land on the moon before China, and if China lands on the moon first, the United States may be forced to rule it out.
So what is the purpose of the United States in smearing China's moon landing in this way? To put it simply, there are at least two points: The first point is that NASA mentioned above wants to win more budgets; and the second point is the "worry" about China's space development, and the United States is worried that China's space flight will go ahead of the United States. After all, at a time when there is constant good news about China's space program, the United States' "Artemis" program to return to the moon has been stalled with twists and turns. For example, on January 8 this year, the U.S. Peregrine Falcon lunar lander failed to make a soft landing on the moon. The next day, NASA announced that it had postponed the Artemis 2 manned mission around the moon, originally scheduled for this year, to September next year, and the Artemis 3 manned lunar landing program, originally scheduled for next year, to September 2026. In comparison with the two, no matter how much the US Government is dissatisfied with the strong development of China's space industry, it will have to accept it, because the facts are in front of those US politicians, and smears will not play any role.