Image1: Far side of the Moon, photographed by Apollo 16
Image2: Valles Marineris, Mars. Credit: NASA
China has set out its space plans for the next 5 years, including soft landing a probe on the far side of the moon around 2018 and launching its first Mars probe by 2020. “To explore the vast cosmos, develop the space industry and build China into a space power is a dream we pursue unremittingly,” read a white paper. It says China aims to use space for peaceful purposes and to guarantee national security, and to carry out cutting edge scientific research.
The white paper released by the information office of China’s Cabinet points to the growing ambitions of China’s already rapidly advancing space program. Although the white paper doesn’t mention it, China’s eventual goal is the symbolic feat of landing an astronaut on the moon. While Russia and the US have more experience in manned space travel, China’s military-backed program has made steady progress in a comparatively short time.
Since China conducted its first crewed space mission in 2003, it has staged a spacewalk and landed a rover on the moon in 2013—the first time humans had soft landed anything on the moon since the 1970s. Last month, 2 astronauts returned from a month-long stay aboard China’s Tiangong 2 experimental space station, the country’s 6th and longest crewed mission. A fully functioning, permanently crewed space station is on course to begin operations 6 years from now and is slated to run for at least a decade.
China’s Mars probe would explore and bring back samples from the red planet, explore the Jupiter system and “conduct research into major scientific questions such as the origin and evolution of the solar system, and search for extraterrestrial life.” The paper says the Chang’e-4 lunar probe will help shed light on the formation and evolution of the moon.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/china-plans-land-probes-side-moon-mars-2020-44408237
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