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China continued to gather momentum in space in 2021. With a record-breaking 55 orbital launches, the country made it again to the top of the list, ahead of the USA's 51 and Russia's 25 launches. However, nearly 90% of the Chinese launches were carried out by the state-owned Long March rocket family. In contrast, only about one-third of the US launches were made by government-funded rockets. National Science Review invited Ji Wu (吴季), an expert in space science, former director of the National Space Science Center (NSSC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and author of The Moon Summit, Lunar Hotel and Space Tourism, to talk about the internal and external driving forces behind the emerging private space sector in China, and government policies supporting its development since 2014. Wu also shared his insights into space tourism as a gateway to space for all, as well as his concerns for the orderly competition in the global market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A group from the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei used rare earth ion-doped crystals to test the world's first quantum repeater segment based on absorptive quantum memories, and achieved the longest, record-breaking optical storage time of 1 hour. A list of the top 10 domestic science and technology stories was jointly released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering in Beijing on 18 January 2022. Graph: Tianwen-1, China's first mission to Mars, was decalred a success. [Extracted from the article]

In a survey released by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in November 2021, the search for Earth-like planets outside our solar system was identified as a major goal for astronomy over the next 10 years. National Science Review invites Douglas N.C. Lin (林潮), emeritus professor of astrophysics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has studied planet formation, evolution and solar system dynamics for almost five decades, to look back on exoplanet research, a field that has expanded exponentially in the past 30 years, and to envision the opportunities and challenges in our search for habitable worlds. As the founding director of the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University, Lin offers his insights on how China's astronomical community can benefit more from collaboration, and what young scientists could do to seize the opportunities offered by what he calls 'a golden era of exoplanet research'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]