COLORADO SPRINGS — China is ratcheting up its space capabilities at an impressive clip, with an eye toward challenging the United States' long-held supremacy in the final frontier, U.S. officials say.
That supremacy was established in dramatic fashion in 1969, when NASA's Apollo 11 touched down on the moon and ended the Cold War space race with the Soviet Union. This lunar achievement has had real and lasting consequences: The United States' unparalleled space assets have given the nation's military a powerful edge over the decades, providing information-gathering and communications capabilities that other countries couldn't match.
