Mars, Jupiter, and Beyond: Insights into China’s Ambitious Space Exploration Plans

If space exploration and discoveries were mainly the work of NASA and the ESA for many years, space is seeing a new competitor arrive in force: China. From exploit to exploit and from discovery to discovery, the Middle Kingdom is increasingly becoming a future leader in the sector. This is evidenced by its ambitions for its next missions announced on the occasion of theInternational Astronautical Congress (IAC) which is held in Milan.

The Moon then Mars

The Selene star is at the center of the concerns of the largest space agencies around the world. Indeed, within two years, with the program Artemishumanity should set foot on the Moon and begin, little by little, to settle there permanently.

For China, it's the same thing. The country aims to carry out its first manned mission to our natural satellite and to set foot there by 2030. But also to set up, with the help of several international partners, theInternational Lunar Research Station (ILRS), a lunar base.

But that's not all, like NASA or the ESA, the Chinese space agency (CNSA) also aims to go to Mars. If the objective is one day to set foot there, this is not yet on the agenda for the country. However, China wishes to make its contribution in the search for proof or lack thereof that life could have been sheltered on the Red Planet.

In this sense, it plans to use technology that it used for its Chang'e-5 and Chang'e-6 lunar missions, in order to successfully collect samples from Mars and bring them back to Earth. A first. Indeed, in the forecast schedule, the launch of collection instruments should take place by 2028 with a return planned around 2031. If China succeeds, it would then overtake NASA in achieving this technical feat.

China and planetary defense

One day, perhaps, our planet will find itself under threat from an asteroid. To mitigate this possibility and save humanity from a catastrophe similar to that which exterminated the dinosaurs, the major space agencies are concentrating part of their resources in the field of planetary defense.

In this sense, NASA notably carried out the DART mission in 2022 (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) which aimed to deviate an asteroid from its trajectory by sending a probe crashing into it.

Thus, without giving a precise date other than the 2030s, China also aims to test this in order to become a possible defender of the planet against a celestial threat.

Heading towards Jupiter, its moons and beyond

Finally, to compete with NASA and the ESA in the exploration of the Solar System, beyond the main asteroid belt (between Mars and Jupiter), China will send vessels towards the Jovian system.

The objective is to study the system as a whole, but also to focus more specifically on one of the best-known satellites of the largest planet in the Solar System: Callisto. This should happen in the early 2030s and would therefore look like China's flagship mission in the next decade.

In addition to this, as recalled Spaceanother planet is in China's sights. Much more distant than Jupiter, it is Uranus, the ice giant. Indeed, in 2022, indiscretions suggested that China was aiming to send two ships to these two planets using a single rocket. So killing two birds with one stone.

With such a program, to which is of course added Tiangong, the Chinese space station, the Middle Kingdom intends to become a leader in space. A country which wishes to measure itself against the undisputed leaders in the field and which has already proven that it is able to do so.

Source : Space

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