China has released a video of what its base on the Moon will be like, and it contains a rather strange detail.

The Chinese space agency CNSA published a concept video of its future base on the Moon a few days ago. In addition to its ambitious vision for the Moon over the next 20 years, the video contains a detail that has raised some eyebrows.

City on the Moon until 2045. China is leading the construction of a lunar base. His vision is that in 2045 it will be a city full of skyscrapers, launch towers, solar panels, antennas, reactors, mining and astronauts conducting experiments or traveling on their rovers.

“We are no longer satisfied with the visit, we want to conduct long-term studies,” the video says. “The International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) will be open to all countries. It will help humanity move further into deep space.”

What’s the space shuttle doing there? The most unusual thing about the CNSA video is the rocket taking off from the moon in a futuristic version of the base. This is a unique space shuttle that NASA used to launch astronauts into low Earth orbit between 1981 and 2011.

The outer tank is orange, the color of the characteristic foam that was used to insulate rocket fuel tanks. And what is attached to it is, without a doubt, the mythical shuttle on which astronauts traveled.

An innocent mistake. The United States has banned NASA from any cooperation with China, so the appearance of a decommissioned American spacecraft in the video is likely due to an innocent oversight by its creators. Evidence of this is that the CNSA eliminated the missile in later versions of the video, although the original broadcast was recorded.

Anyone can make a mistake, but such a gaffe in the midst of a space race with the United States, when China is trying to convince other countries to join it, is… embarrassing.

To the Moon from Nicaragua. Nicaragua is the latest country to join the Chinese ILRS project. Russia has been a founding member since 2021, and countries such as Venezuela, South Africa, Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey have joined in the past two years.

China plans to create a basic version of the lunar station by 2035. At first it will consist of a series of scientific experiments and technology demonstrators, like the lunar nuclear reactor, and will be unmanned, but the idea is that it will eventually become a habitable base.

Image | CNSA

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