CHINA vowed Tuesday to speed up the development of its space industry as it set out its plans to become the first country to soft land a probe on the far side of the moon, by around 2018, and launch its first Mars probe by 2020.
It said 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. China places great emphasis on the development of its space industry, seen as a symbol of national prestige that will raise the country’s standing in the world.
Although the white paper doesn’t mention it, China’s eventual goal is to land an astronaut on the moon. China is keen to flex its muscle in space.
While Russia and the United States 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, two astronauts returned from a month-long stay aboard China’s Tiangong 2 experimental space station, the country’s sixth and longest crewed mission. A fully functioning, permanently crewed space station is on course to begin operations in six years and is slated to run for at least a decade.
The white paper reiterated China’s plans to launch its first Mars probe by 2020, saying it 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 said the Chang’e-4 lunar probe will help shed light on the formation and evolution of the moon.
He Qisong, a space security expert at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, said that achieving mankind’s first soft landing on the far side of the moon is a newly stated goal. It indicates that China has mastered the underlying technology needed to land on a specific area of the lunar surface, he added. “China never talks big and says something it’s unable to achieve,” he said.
Countries involved in successful missions to Mars include the United States, Russia (formerly the USSR) and India. In addition to these countries, Japan and China launched several spacecraft towards Mars, but never successfully carried out missions. In addition to countries, some space agencies, including the European Space Agency, have histories of successful Mars missions too.