Macau is leaving HK behind in space race

As I write this I am still mesmerized by the amazing fully immersive video, sound and “vibrational” experience called SPACE that had its grand gala opening at Wynn Palace in Macao on Jan 19. I was very fortunate to have been selected as a technical and scientific adviser to the product, which is spellbinding in its quality and impact.

Using breathtaking high-resolution video, the show is a celebration of the wonders of the universe and our attempts to explore it.

Created by North America-based Illuminarium, which is known globally for such spectacles, the show includes some incredible imagery adapted from the public James Webb Space Telescope data and others. However, at its heart, this spectacular “edutainment” is a celebration of the ambition, achievements and planned lunar future of the incredible Chinese space program.

It is an exceptionally timely sensory exhibit put on as part of the deal to renew gaming licenses in Macao for all the major luxury hotels and their money-spinning ventures. More entertainment options for guests were apparently a stipulation, and many different ideas were explored.

Happily, Wynn Resorts selected SPACE as the basis for their public offering. It impresses not only visually, musically, and even vibrationally (as guests literally feel the floor shake as a massive Chinese rocket appears to blast off around them) but also in terms of serious efforts to educate.

And this is where I discern its real value for the greater public. Judicious and informative panels appear throughout the various interwoven chapters of the 45-minute show that highlight technical details and descriptions of not only cosmic wonders but various past, current, and future aspects of the Chinese space program of science and exploration.

These include the cutting-edge Chinese space station in low Earth orbit, a microgravity science lab of exceptional promise. It is an international test bed for all sorts of experiments across pharmaceuticals, smart manufacturing, biological and agricultural investigations, and my field of astrophysics and space science, to name but a few.

In an exciting coincidence, but perhaps a marker of where the focus in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) currently lies, the Macau University of Science and Technology (MUST) hosted an international forum on space and planetary science from Jan 10-14. The University of Hong Kong’s deputy director of the Laboratory for Space Research, Dr Joseph Michalski, was at the conference, one of only three keynote speakers. The event attracted experts from Canada, Macao, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Germany and the Chinese mainland.

The talk schedule highlighted many of the most recent achievements of the burgeoning Chinese space program, including the successful Chang’e 5 lunar rock sample return moon mission (HKU was the only institution in the city to be lent a moon rock from this mission) and the vast Tianwen 1 Mars mission by the China National Space Administration (CNSA), the Chinese equivalent of NASA.

This Mars mission comprised six spacecraft: an orbiter, two deployable cameras, a lander, a remote camera, and the Zhurong Mars rover that gracefully trundled off the lander to explore the Martian surface.

A final salient point was the opportunity to showcase preliminary research results from the first Macao Science Satellite 1 (Macau 1). This powerful satellite was launched on May 21, 2023, with a Long March 2C rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. It is the first of three planned Chinese satellites able to measure the Earth’s geomagnetic field with high fidelity and the world’s first low-latitude geomagnetic field and space environment scientific detection satellite. Of course, MUST hosts a State key lab in lunar and planetary sciences. There is currently no equivalent in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region – but there should be. This joint MUST-CNSA mission is an excellent example of SAR leadership in a Chinese space mission that garnered mainland support and significant local government investment.

Hong Kong universities are well placed to lobby not only for our own State key lab in space and planetary sciences under the Chinese Academy of Science but also, crucially, for mainland support for a HKD1 billion ($127.8 million) level HKSAR science satellite mission, perhaps in high-energy astrophysics.

This would ideally be a collaboratively led, multiuniversity endeavor for maximum shared HKSAR benefit with HKU and Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) the obvious main choices, given their current footprints in this area (via the HKU Lab for Space Research and PolyU›s Research Centre for Deep Space Explorations and their Astronautics group) but with options for Chinese University and the University of Science and Technology too. Remember – Hong Kong has 10 times the population and many times the GDP of Macao with much broader expertise and industrial capabilities. So the HKSAR could play the lead role in a major national space science mission that would have massive flow-on benefits for attracting young minds into STEM education and high-technology space industries taking root here and in the GBA. Furthermore, given Hong Kong›s special status, it could lead to further support for other Chinese space explorations and maximize our impact and collaborations internationally in our role as a «superconnector».

This is all speculative – but I can’t help but feel wistful and concerned about why Hong Kong has not yet done more to grasp the myriad opportunities in space science and technology that are dropping like manna from the mainland but being scooped up so adroitly by our sister, the Macao Special Administrative Region.

There is now so much going on in space, including in the rapidly emerging commercial New Space economy. An example is the US’ Astrobotics Peregrine private moon shot launched on a Vulcan Centaur rocket on Jan 8. Sadly, it suffered a propellant leak that doomed it to an aborted mission that otherwise would have been the first moon landing since Apollo XVII in December 1972. It came to a fiery end as the returning spacecraft burnt up in the Earth’s atmosphere. Interestingly, a couple of days later, a Chinese commercial YL 1 rocket (Orienspace’s Gravity 1) was launched from a ship off the coast of China’s Shandong province, taking three satellites into orbit. It was the first launch of this rocket type, the most powerful Chinese commercial rocket ever assembled and the world’s most potent solid-fueled launcher ever to achieve orbit at the first attempt. These contrasting fortunes emphasize the still risky nature of space but perhaps indicate China’s growing prowess in this area.

Quentin Parker, China Daily