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Beijing (AFP)
China’s landing of a probe on the Moon this week, the first attempt by a nation to retrieve lunar samples in four decades, underscored how far the country has come to achieve its space dream.
Beijing has invested billions in its military-led space program, hoping to have a manned space station by 2022 and eventually send humans to the Moon.
China has come a long way in its career to catch up with the United States and Russia, whose astronauts and cosmonauts have had decades of experience in space exploration.
Beijing views its space project as an indicator of its growing global stature and growing technological power.
Here’s a look at China’s space program over the decades and where it’s headed:
Mao’s vote
Shortly after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, Chairman Mao Zedong declared: “We too will make satellites.”
It took more than a decade, but in 1970, China launched its first satellite on a Long March rocket.
Human spaceflight took decades more, and Yang Liwei became the first Chinese “taikonaut” in 2003.
As the launch approached, concerns over the mission’s feasibility led Beijing to cancel a live television broadcast at the last minute.
But the launch went smoothly, with Yang orbiting Earth 14 times during his 21-hour flight aboard the Shenzhou 5.
China launched five manned missions after that.
Space station and ‘Jade Rabbit’
Following in the footsteps of the United States and Russia, China is striving to build a space station that encircles our planet.
The Tiangong-1 laboratory was launched in September 2011.
In 2013, the second Chinese woman in space, Wang Yaping, gave a video class from inside the space module to children in the world’s most populous country.
The spacecraft was also used for medical experiments and, more importantly, tests intended to prepare for the construction of a space station.
The lab was followed by the lunar “Jade Rabbit” rover in 2013, which first seemed like a failure when it went dormant and stopped sending signals to Earth.
However, it recovered dramatically and ultimately surveyed the Moon’s surface for 31 months, well beyond its life expectancy.
In 2016, China put its second orbiting laboratory, Tiangong-2, into orbit 393 kilometers (244 miles) above Earth. Taikonauts who have visited the station have conducted experiments on growing rice and other plants, as well as docking spacecraft.
China was deliberately left out of the International Space Station effort, but is now expected to begin assembling its own orbital outpost this year, with crews to begin using it around 2022.
‘Space dream’
Under President Xi Jinping, plans for China’s “space dream,” as he calls it, have accelerated.
China is finally looking to catch up with the United States and Russia after years of belatedly matching their space milestones.
In addition to a space station, China also plans to build a base on the Moon, and Zhang Kejian, head of the country’s National Space Administration, said last year that the goal was to launch a manned lunar mission by 2029.
But lunar work suffered a setback in 2017 when the Long March-5 Y2, a powerful heavy-lift rocket, failed to launch on a mission to send communication satellites into orbit.
That forced the launch of Chang’e-5, which was originally scheduled to collect samples from the Moon, to be postponed in the second half of 2017.
Another robot, the Chang’e-4, landed on the other side of the Moon in January 2019, a historic first.
Chang-e’5 landed on the near side of the Moon on Tuesday, where it will collect lunar rocks and soil, the national space agency said.
Chinese taikonauts and scientists have also spoken of manned missions to Mars as Beijing strives to become a global space power.
© 2020 AFP
