In April, China will launch a probe to the moon in preparation for manned flights and even establish an outpost on its surface
China launched last Friday, 2/2/07 (18:28 Israel time) a navigation satellite that will be the first in a very busy space year, during which China will launch the first spacecraft to orbit the moon. The launch of the Beidou satellite was carried out from the Xichang launch center in Sichuan province in the southwest of the country.
A Long March 3A rocket put the satellite into orbit 24 minutes later.
The satellite is expected to stabilize in a geostationary orbit (at an altitude of 35,888 km), and it will join three other satellites in the Baidu series launched in the last seven years.
Beidou satellites are the first group in a series of navigation platforms placed in space under the Compass project. The fleet should be operational next year for most of China, but it may take a few more years before the system can be used all over the world. The compass system will provide users with their exact location similar to the information provided by the GPS system.
The launch took place less than a month after a deadly experiment of destroying a satellite in space carried out by China. The destruction of the old meteorological forecasting satellite drew criticism from the US and other governments around the world.
China plans to carry out at least 10 launches in 2007. The most prominent of them is the launch of the Shanxi lunar rover on April 1, which will orbit the moon at an altitude of 200 km above its surface and create detailed maps of the moon's surface and analyze the composition of the soil. This spacecraft is the first step in a complete lunar program being developed in China, other missions may include bringing soil samples from the moon to Earth, and finally landing humans and possibly even establishing an outpost.
Additional launches expected this year - the CBEFS 2B Earth observation satellite shared by China and Brazil which will be added to two previous satellites in this program; The second satellite in China's ocean research satellite series - Haiyang 1B will monitor sea temperature and winds. Also in the plan to launch two communication satellites for the Beijing Olympics in 2008; improved meteorological satellite; A communication satellite for other uses, Sinusat-3, and a number of scientific and military satellites will also be launched.
The Shenzhou 7 mission is expected to be launched in 2008 and this time there will be a crew of three taikonauts on a flight that will last several days. During the flight, one of the astronauts will go on a spacewalk - another first of its kind operation for the Chinese space program.
