China notched a diplomatic victory in its race against the U.S. for influence in space, with Egypt agreeing to support Beijing's plan for a proposed project on the moon.

The China National Space Administration on Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding with the Egyptian Space Agency that will see them cooperate on the International Lunar Research Station, a Chinese-backed base that's expected to begin operation around 2030.

The agreement builds on their collaboration, which saw a Chinese rocket send an Egyptian satellite into orbit from a launch center in the Gobi Desert on Monday.

That launch promotes "a shared future for mankind" and "fully demonstrates China's demeanor as a major country and the principle of extensive consultation, joint contribution, and shared benefits," said Kong Dejun, head of the international economic cooperation department at the Ministry of Commerce, according to a report by state-run broadcaster CCTV.

The new space race is adding to tensions between Beijing and Washington, as both compete to win allies in their plans to send astronauts to the moon in coming years. The agreement between China and Egypt comes just a week after the U.S.

On August 23, ISRO's Vikram lander detached from its propulsion module and made a soft landing near the moon's south pole region. The lander then deployed its Pragyan rover, and for two weeks the endearing little solar-powered rover performed marvelously, detecting water ice and characterizing the makeup of the lunar regolith before succumbing to the darkness and cold of the lunar night.

But since the rover mission ended, the propulsion module that brought it to the moon has made a detour, performing a series of complex maneuvers that took it from a tight lunar orbit back to Earth orbit.

Someday, in the not-too-distant future, humans may send robotic probes to explore nearby star systems. These robot explorers will likely take the form of lightsails and wafercraft (a la Breakthrough Starshot) that will rely on directed energy (lasers) to accelerate to relativistic speeds—aka a fraction of the speed of light. With that kind of velocity, lightsails and wafercraft could make the journey across interstellar space in a matter of decades instead of centuries (or longer!) Given time, these missions could serve as pathfinders for more ambitious exploration programs involving astronauts.

Of course, any talk of interstellar travel must consider the massive technical challenges this entails. In a recent paper posted to the arXiv preprint server, a team of engineers and astrophysicists considered the effects that relativistic space travel will have on communications.