{"id":673725,"date":"2026-09-05T10:16:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T10:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/673725\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T10:16:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T10:16:18","slug":"war-on-earth-could-spill-over-to-the-moon-chinese-space-scientists-warn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/673725\/","title":{"rendered":"War on Earth could spill over to the moon, Chinese space scientists warn"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a rare study, Chinese aerospace researchers<\/a> have explored how a war could one day spill into the vast space between the Earth and the moon<\/a>, with rival spacecraft chasing and evading each other, trying to slip past defences and even blocking strategic routes.<\/p>\n

Spacecraft could hide in the complex gravitational environment around the moon, where their trajectories are difficult to predict, before emerging and moving towards targets closer to Earth when needed, according to a team from the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xian.<\/p>\n

The craft could also be stationed near \u201cchoke points\u201d \u2013 regions where important or fuel-efficient routes converge \u2013 ready to intercept rivals and potentially force them to break through or take less efficient routes, the researchers wrote in the Chinese-language Journal of Command and Control in July.<\/p>\n

Such capabilities could have an impact without an actual confrontation, they argued.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout directly using force, [a country could] compel an adversary to change its route, delay a mission, give up a launch window or incur higher costs,\u201d said Dang Zhaohui, the report\u2019s lead author and an associate professor at Northwestern Polytechnical University\u2019s school of astronautics.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is at stake in cislunar orbital competition is not any single spacecraft, orbit or route, but the ability to access, control and use space \u2013 and to deter adversaries \u2013 that they provide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cislunar space is the vast region where the gravity of both the Earth and the moon shapes how spacecraft move. Compared with satellites orbiting relatively close to Earth<\/a>, vehicles there can follow far more complex paths under the pull of both bodies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a rare study, Chinese aerospace researchers have explored how a war could one day spill into the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[164148,5214,284768,6599,18,149875,19,17,284767,10626,21483,133,451,8913,1545,69017],"class_list":["post-673725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-blockade","tag-chinese","tag-cislunar","tag-earth","tag-eire","tag-evasion","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-journal-of-command-and-control","tag-moon","tag-northwestern-polytechnical-university","tag-science","tag-space","tag-spacecraft","tag-war","tag-xian"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117217917916240006","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}