Hi, I'm Irafledo. You're listening to Science Friday.

Did you know that China has a very active space program, including a space station and rovers on the moon?

NASA's Artemis program, it says we will go back to the moon this time to stay.

So China has something similar in its mind.

Over the past few years, I have become really interested in the Chinese space program.

They've launched complicated robotic moon missions.

They've brought back samples of rock from

the far side of the moon. And I've thought, you know, if this was NASA doing this, we'd all be

talking about it every other week. And now with big budget cuts proposed at NASA, is China going

to become the global leader in space?

Joining me now is Ling Xin, science reporter at the South China Morning Post.

She's based in Ohio.

Welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you, Ira, for having me.

China has some really interesting space missions.

Let's talk about it.

Just this week, they released a picture from a

spacecraft headed to an asteroid. Yes. So that mission is the second in a series of a deep space

mission, which means beyond the moon. The first one was a Tian-Mars mission, which was very successful.

China made it to the Mars surface in its first attempt to land on the red planet.

And now this is the second one.

Tianun-2 actually, it's a very time-consuming mission.

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