Space exploration has always been as much a quest for geopolitical gain as it has for scientific discovery. The Americans and the Russians carried out launch after launch in the middle of the century not, first and foremost, for the sake of science, but in the name of national identity. China’s civilian and military space programs—and their motivations—are inextricably linked. Some analysts say it can be easy to overstate the influence of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army on space activities, and point out that the scientists and engineers on the civilian side are like scientists and engineers at NASA. But there is no solid delineation between the two. China’s ambitions in space are as strategic as the Vostok and Apollo programs of the 1960s.

“When you are the first country to land a probe on the far side of the moon, that says something about your science and technology, that says something about your industry,” says Dean Cheng, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., and one of the few Chinese-speaking analysts in the U.S. that focus on China’s space program. “It says something about what you can achieve that in turn is going to affect how countries view China when it comes to terrestrial issues, whether it’s border disputes, whether it’s building islands in the South China Sea, whether it’s Taiwan’s future.”

The Chinese government is notoriously secretive about both its civil and military space activities, but it has at times provided small glimpses of its work in the last decade. The Shenzhou 6 launch at the Jiuquan launch facility in 2005 was broadcast live. Foreign reporters were banned from attending the launch, and such access remains restricted. The same goes for private citizens, who are not likely to reach Jiuquan and other launch sites, which are located in remote areas. For outsiders, understanding the country’s pursuits requires reading between the lines. Take CNSA’s recent mention of China’s efforts to improve its satellite remote-sensing system, for example. “That’s also called a spy satellite,” Cheng points out.

Such is the two-side nature of space exploration: A rocket can launch a capsule to the moon—or a bomb toward an enemy.

“If I can monitor the oceans for ocean salinity, I can learn a lot of stuff about climate change. I can also learn about ocean conditions that might help me find submarines,” Cheng said. “Synthetic aperture radar can see through clouds and see all sorts of things, whether it is geographic features or whether it is an armored battalion under camouflage.”

China has spent the last decade demonstrating its technological abilities in cislunar space, the area between the Earth and the moon, where satellites and space telescopes alike reside. The country now operates more satellites than Russia does, though both are bested by the U.S. Through its Chang’e program, named for the goddess of the moon, China has shown it can maneuver spacecraft around the moon and rovers on its surface. Such advancements may not seem particularly noteworthy to some American observers, but that perspective is misguided, says Paul Spudis, a scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. NASA is planning to launch an uncrewed spacecraft to orbit the moon in 2018, but Spudis wishes the U.S. would put more focus and funding into lunar missions than it has.