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BEIJING (AP) – China’s landing of its third probe on the moon is part of an increasingly ambitious space program that has a rover robot en route to Mars, is developing a reusable space plane and plans to return humans. to the lunar surface.
The Chang’e 5, the first effort to bring lunar rocks to Earth since the 1970s, collected samples on Wednesday, the Chinese space agency announced. The probe landed in the Sea of Storms Tuesday on the near side of the moon.
Space exploration is a political trophy for the ruling Communist Party, which wants global influence to match China’s economic success.
China is a generation behind the United States and Russia, but its secret military-linked program is developing rapidly. It is creating distinctive missions that, if successful, could put Beijing at the forefront of space flight.
The next decade will be “quite critical” in space exploration, said Kathleen Campbell, an astrobiologist and geologist at the University of Auckland.
“This is where we are going to transform from near-Earth orbit and back to what people will call ‘deep space,'” Campbell said.
In 2003, China became the third nation to put an astronaut into orbit on its own, four decades after the former Soviet Union and the United States. Its first temporary orbiting laboratory was launched in 2011 and the second in 2016. Plans call for the launch of a permanent space station after 2022.
This week’s landing is “a historic step in China’s cooperation with the international community in the peaceful use of outer space,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said.
“China will continue to promote international cooperation and the exploration and use of outer space in the spirit of working for the benefit of all mankind,” Hua said.
After the flight of astronaut Yang Liwei in 2003, space officials expressed hope for a manned lunar mission as early as this year. But they said that depended on budget and technology. They have delayed that goal until 2024 or later.
The space agency gave no reason to land its latest probe in the Sea of Storms, far from where US and Soviet spacecraft landed. But the choice could help shed light on potential sites being explored for a crewed mission.
The Beijing space plane would be the Chinese version of the American space shuttle and the short-lived Buran of the former Soviet Union.
China has also launched its own Beidou network of navigation satellites so that the Communist Party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army, does not have to rely on US GPS or a rival Russian system.
Last year, China graduated from “me too” missions copying Soviet and American companies to get its own first scores when it became the first nation to land a probe on the little-explored far side of the moon.
That probe, the Chang’e 4, and its rover robot are still running, transmitting to Earth via an orbiter passing over the other side of the moon. China’s first lunar lander, Chang’e 3, is still transmitting.
China’s first manned spacecraft, the Shenzhou capsules, were based on Russian technology. Its powerful Long March rockets, like their Soviet and American predecessors, are based on ballistic missiles developed using technology seized from Nazi Germany after World War II.
China has been more cautious than the fast-paced space race between the United States and the Soviet Union of the 1960s, which was marked by deaths. China’s manned missions have proceeded without incident. Some robotic vehicle launches have been delayed due to technical issues, but appear to have been resolved.
China finds itself in a growing space rivalry with Asian neighbors Japan and India, whom it sees as strategic competitors. Both have sent their own probes to Mars.
As Chang’e 5 collects moon rocks, Japan’s space agency has just performed the even more challenging feat of obtaining samples from an asteroid, Ryugu. The Hayabusa2 mission is to deliver them to Earth on Saturday.
As their confidence grows, Beijing’s space goals have multiplied.
It has joined the race to explore Mars, and its Tianwen-1 probe, launched in July with a rover robot to search for signs of water, will complete its 470 million kilometer (292 million mile) journey in February.
Plans call for a permanent space station with crew starting in 2022.
China is excluded from the International Space Station due to US opposition to including Chinese military officers in a company that is otherwise operated by civilian space agencies.
The plans also call for an international lunar research base at some point, Pei Zhaoyu, deputy director of the Chinese agency’s lunar exploration center, told reporters last week.
Despite its successes, China’s military-led program is more secretive than those of other governments.
Yang and other Chinese astronauts made only a handful of brief public appearances after their flights, in contrast to Soviet and American astronauts who were sent on world publicity tours before cheering on foreign crowds.
The agency announced in September that its space plane had completed a successful test flight, but has yet to release details or even a photo of the spacecraft.
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Milko reported from Jakarta, Indonesia.
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