The Sunday Times, 

While America’s New Horizons space probe was flying by a deep-frozen blob of rock 4bn miles from Earth last week, Chinese scientists had their eyes on a galactic parking space much closer to home.

The landing of China’s Chang’e 4 lunar explorer on the far side of the moon exposed the growing gulf between peaceful US scientific programmes devoted to exploration and discovery, and Chinese plans to turn space into what the US vice-president, Mike Pence, has described a “war-fighting domain”.

American scientists were thrilled by images beamed back from the 20-mile long lump of space debris known as Ultima Thule. They showed a snowman-shape that appeared to have been formed when two smaller blobs collided and merged. The data collected by New Horizons may…