China is pouring billions into its space program in a bid to catch up with the US and Europe, but has already been beaten in the race to Mars by its neighbor India, which launched a low-cost spacecraft into orbit around the Red Planet in September 2014. A previous attempt to send a spacecraft using a Russian launcher in 2011 ended in a crash. and the spaceships on it
China plans to send a rover to Mars to explore the Red Planet, senior Chinese space agency officials said at a press conference on Friday.
The goal is to launch the spacecraft around the year 2020. "This will be a huge step for the country's space capabilities," the press conference said.
China's Xinhua News Agency quotes space expert Ye Feijian as saying, "What we want to achieve is to launch a spacecraft into orbit around Mars, land and deploy an all-terrain vehicle in one mission, which will be quite difficult."
China is pouring billions into its space program in a bid to catch up with the US and Europe, but has already been beaten in the race to Mars by its neighbor India, which launched a low-cost spacecraft into orbit around the Red Planet in September 2014. So the Chinese must think bigger, sending a rover from India to explore the ground, atmosphere and environment of the planet and look for traces of water.
The SUV will have the ability to sense its surroundings, plan its own route, perform scientific experiments and diagnose faults autonomously. It will be mobile intelligence, says Xinhua news agency. Radio Don lateral signals between Earth and Mars require up to 40 minutes, so most of the time the vehicle will have to take care of itself. The soil inspectors will only solve complex problems, Sukkot says.
"Research on these topics is a study of humanity itself and the origins of life," he said, adding: "Only by completing the mission of launching a spacecraft to Mars will China be able to say that it has truly begun deep space exploration."
China has an ambitious, military-driven, multibillion-dollar space program, and Beijing sees its presence in space as a sign of its rising global power.
In 2018, China plans to land the Chang'e 4 spacecraft named after the moon goddess in Chinese mythology on the far side of the moon. So far, China has mainly duplicated the activities of the USA and the Soviet Union decades ago.
The US landed the Viking spacecraft on Mars and the former Soviet Union and the European Space Agency also launched spacecraft to Mars. China's first attempt to launch a satellite to Mars failed in 2011 when a Russian launcher failed to reach Earth orbit.
