During Chinaโs first โSpace Dayโ last Friday, the countryโs National Space Administration (CNSA) announced its plans to launch a Mars mission probe in 2020, slating the probeโs ETA on the red planet for 2021, the 100-year anniversary of the Communist Party of China.
โWe are working on a tight engineering timeline, hoping to launch our Mars probe in the window of 2020,โ says Dazhe Xu, the director of the China National Space Administration. โThis is a huge challenge, because at the moment, countries that have successfully launched a probe to Mars include the U.S and Russia.โ
Chinaโs space program has made rapid progress since they launched their first man-made satellite forty six years ago. Like their Western counterparts, Chinaโs early interests in space were partly motivated by nationalism, where successful space missions asserted countryโs technological and scientific prowess.
Nuclear warfare has also played a part, as certain types of ballistics missiles, such as those traveling across continents, need to travel through outer space in order to reach their target. In 2003, Chinaโs space program made a major milestone when they sent their first Chinese astronaut into space, Liwei Yang.
The upcoming mission to Mars could be Chinaโs next major space achievement.
โSuch a big plan to achieve orbiting, landing and rover deploying in one mission will make a legend,โ says Rongqiao Zhang, the chief designer of the Mars exploration mission. โOnly by completing this Mars probe mission can China say it has embarked on the exploration of deep space in the true sense.โ
A successful launch on Mars wonโt be easy, acknowledges Mr. Zhang, as the success rate of Mars missions worldwide is about fifty-fifty. The probe will have to travel 483 million kilometers through space before reaching Mars, a long voyage that can fail for a number of reasons, from small trajectory errors to solar flares. Upon entering Marsโ atmosphere, the probe will also have to survive its descent onto Marsโ rough terrain and environment.
According to Mr. Zhang, the Mars missionโs launch date is meant to coincide with the favorable alignment of Earth and Mars, which is predicted to occur in 2020. Chinaโs space program also plans to launch their own space station, the โTiangong Space stationโ, that same year. Unlike other countries, such as Russia, Japan, Canada, and the U.S, China is barred from the International Space Station (ISS), due to a law passed by the U.S Congress in 2011 over security concerns.
