WENCHANG, China (AP) – China’s recent trip to China is another target of the Asian powerhouse’s slow but steady tide towards the stars.
China became the third country to orbit a person 17 years ago and the first to land on the moon in 2019. Future ambitions include a permanent space station and a U.S. No. 50 years later people are put back on the moon. Did.
But before launching the latest lunar mission early Tuesday morning, a senior program official said China was not competing with anyone.
“China will set its development goals in the aerospace industry based on its own consideration of science and engineering technology,” Zhao Zhao, deputy director of the China National Space Administration’s Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center, told reporters hours earlier. The e5 mission was launched.
“We don’t put competitors (before us) when we set those goals,” Pei said.
Whether that is true is debatable. China aims to join the United States, Europe and Japan as the top technology manufacturers, and the space program has been a key component. Enhancing the reputation of the ruling Communist Party is also a matter of national pride.
What is clear is that after joining the Soviet Union and the United States in 2003 and launching a man into space in 2003, China’s cautious, extracurricular approach has succeeded. This has been followed by more crew missions, the unveiling of a space lab, the placement of a rover on the moon’s relatively incredible distance, and landing on Mars this year.
The Chang5 mission, if successful, will bring lunar rocks and debris to Earth for the first time since the 1976 Soviet mission. Four modules of the spacecraft exploded over a giant Long March-5Y rocket from the Venture Launch Center on Henan Island.
The main task of this mission is to drill 2 meters (about 7 feet) on the surface of the moon and cut about 2 kilograms (4..4 pounds) of rocks and other debris. The lender will deposit them in the ascent. Landing on the grasslands of the Inner Mongolia region in mid-December, the return capsule will deliver them back to Earth.
“It would be an impressive feat for any nation to carry out the Changa 5 mission,” Florida-based expert Stephen Clark told the Florida-based expert now publishing SpaceFlight.
China is proud to have reached the site, largely through its own efforts, although Russia provided initial assistance in training astronauts, and the Chinese crew Shenzhou space capsule is based on Russia’s Soyuz.
While there have been collaborations with some other countries, especially those associated with the European Space Agency, which have provided tracking support for Chinese missions, the United States is not one of them.
U.S. law requires congressional approval for cooperation between NASA and China’s military-linked program. Ongoing political and economic controversies, in particular, accuse China of stealing or forcing the transfer of sensitive trade secrets, reducing the likelihood of closer ties.
At the time of China’s space program, mainly by others, the U.S. And is seen as a repetition of the achievements achieved by the former Soviet Union. China’s permanent space station is also now under construction, partly in response to its exclusion from the International Space Station, mainly at the urging of the US.
Other countries are moving ahead with the dramatic landing of the American Curiosity Mars rover in 2012 and samples taken from the planet Rayugu, which returns to Earth in the second month of the Japanese explorer Hayabusa 2.
Henry Hertzfeld, director of the Space Policy Institute at George and George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, said China could still boast of an “increasingly sophisticated and demonstration space skills”.
Pae told reporters that lunar exploration is a priority for China, which will likely take the form of a “man-machine combination” in the future.
No target date has been announced for the Crude Moon mission, but Pei said an international lunar research station is to be built to provide long-term support for scientific research activities on the surface of this cycle.
“We will decide when to implement a human lunar landing based on scientific requirements and technical and economic conditions,” he said.
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AP researcher Liu Zheng in Beijing contributed to this report.
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