Ambitious Chinese project to build a station on the South Pole of the Moon.
China's base construction timeline coincides with NASA's schedule
China wants to land its astronauts on the moon by the end of this decade.
BEIJING: Pakistan has joined China's expanding club of partners in an ambitious project to build a research station at the moon's south pole, an area of "mystery, science and intrigue".
Pakistan's Interim Prime Minister Anwar ul Haq Kakar, who is currently in China to attend the Third Belt and Road Forum (BRF), jointly witnessed the signing of the first cooperation agreement with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing on Wednesday.
The China National Space Administration said on Friday that the cooperation will cover areas including engineering and operational aspects of China's lunar base program.
China, which wants to become a major space power by 2030, has already secured the cooperation of Russia, Venezuela and South Africa.
It set a goal of landing astronauts on the moon by the end of this decade.
The timeline for building the South Pole base coincides with NASA's more ambitious Artemis program, which aims to return American astronauts to the lunar surface in December 2025, barring a delay.
India created history by becoming the first ever to reach the unexplored south pole of the moon - the part of the moon's surface that is permanently hidden from Earth's view - this August.
It became the fourth country in the world to land on the moon and the first ever to land a spacecraft near its south pole, just days after a similar Russian mission failed, and the fourth overall to achieve a soft landing.
Both the US and India plan to send astronauts to the moon by 2025 and 2040, respectively.
The last time a man stepped on the moon was in 1972 as part of the American Apollo program.
