Eastward Bound - Planetary Science Rising in Asia

As I’m spending time in Hong Kong this month, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to finally share a project I had intended to cover a while back but never got around to. It is a cool story: Hong Kong, a city not necessarily associated with planetary science, is preparing to launch its first lunar orbiter, Yueshan, in 2028 to continuously monitor meteoroid impacts on the Moon, an essential step when considering plans for a permanent lunar research station. In effect, this will mark the first mission dedicated to long-term study of lunar bombardment, filling a crucial gap in space exploration.

Yet, being here in the Far East has also prompted me to reflect on an aspect of planetary science that has been on my mind for some time. For much of the modern era, planetary science has largely been framed through a Western lens. Up until a few decades ago, the most important planetary discoveries typically pointed toward NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory or ESA's technical hubs (such as ESTEC). Consider the Cassini-Huygens mission: a $3.9 billion flagship spacecraft and lander that ended in 2017 and rewrote our understanding of the Saturnian system. Though it stood as an incredible achievement of human engineering—and remains, in my view, the most accomplished planetary science mission—it was, at its core, a Western endeavour. In other words, during the mission, a career in planetary science almost invariably meant passing through a city in Europe or the United States.

By the 2010s, a clear shift was underway as a number of technically demanding space missions began to be led by nations in the East. Japan’s Hayabusa and Hayabusa-2 achieved historic milestones by returning pristine samples from asteroids 25143 Itokawa in 2010 and Ryugu in 2020; these missions represent an exceptional feat of engineering, as they were the first asteroid sample-return missions (the holy grail in planetary science, see my 2023 post here for more information on this). At the same time, India’s Mangalyaan successfully reached Mars on its maiden attempt, accomplishing the feat at a fraction of the cost of a typical NASA mission and demonstrating that “frugal innovation” could deliver world-class scientific results

However, the most seismic shift came from China’s Chang’e program. By landing Chang’e 4 on the far side of the Moon, a difficult-to-reach region previously untouched by human probes due to the complexities of relay communication, China signalled in 2019 that it was no longer playing catch-up. They were setting the pace. Tianwen-1 marked another milestone, successfully entering orbit around Mars and delivering the Zhurong rover to the planet’s surface on the first attempt. Within a decade, planetary science began to speak Mandarin, Hindi, and Japanese as fluently as English.

By 2026, the shift towards the East has become a permanent feature of the scientific landscape. Now, the US-led Artemis Accords find a peer in the China-Russia International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), which includes eleven other countries. This isn't just political theatre; it now dictates where the science happens. For example, recent analyses of lunar basalts returned by Chang’e 5 and Chang’e 6 have the potential to reassess the Moon’s volcanic history, effectively shifting the global centre of lunar geology closer towards the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Furthermore, this 'globalisation' of space has enabled nations such as the UAE to enter the fray. The Hope probe’s comprehensive map of the Martian atmosphere provided the first truly global view of Martian weather cycles, data that Western scientists now rely on for their own research.

As we look toward the horizon, the dominance of any single region has vanished. With the advent of low-cost launch vehicles and CubeSats, the barriers to entry for planetary science missions continue to decline, with Mexico, Brazil, and South Africa considering launching planetary missions in the near future. In the laboratories of Osaka, roboticists are perfecting the lunar rovers of tomorrow; in Bangalore, spectrometers are being tuned for the Shukrayaan mission to Venus; and in Hong Kong, a lunar probe is being designed not too far away from where I am writing this.

The scientific exploration of our Solar System is finally becoming a global adventure. This is a good thing for us all. As always, onwards and upwards.