BEIJING (Reuters) – China will discuss building a defence system against near-earth asteroids, a senior space agency official said on Saturday, as the country steps up efforts towards realizing its longer term space ambitions.
Zhang Kejian, head of the China National Space Administration, didn’t provide any further details in his opening remarks at a ceremony for China’s space day in the eastern city of Nanjing.
China has made space exploration a top priority in recent years, aiming to establish a programme operating thousands of space flights a year and carrying tens of thousands of tonnes of cargo and passengers by 2045.
It signed a memorandum of understanding last month with Russia to set up an international lunar research station.
(Reporting by Roxanne Liu and Shivani Singh; Editing by Mike Harrison)
