People want to go to the Red Planet, including China. The United States has sent many spacecraft there, as have India and the European Space Agency. Early in the history of the Space Race, the then-Soviet Union mounted an ambitious campaign to get swarms of spacecraft to the Red Planet. A few of their spacecraft did get there and return a little data, but that was about it. Most others failed. As did missions from the U.S. and other countries. But, for the most part, the exploration of Mars has been a largely American concern.
Of course, many of us have heard that Elon Musk wants to send a population of people to Mars. That will start as soon as he’s able to marshall all the resources. His missions could happen in the next decade. We’ll have to wait and see what happens next with SpaceX’s intentions toward the fourth planet.
China and Mars
Of course, China has its eyes on Mars these days. The Chinese National Space Agency has sent one mission to the Red Planet. That was the Yinghuo-1 probe that accompanied the Russian Fobos-Grunt sample return spacecraft. Yinghuo-1 was supposed to orbit Mars while its partner studied the moon Phobos. However, the mission failed not long after launch from Earth in 2011. A few months later, in 2012, Yinghuo-1 deorbited into Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated.
Despite that inauspicious beginning, China has solid plans for going to the Red Planet. It recently showed off its Mars Global Remote Sensing Orbiter (with Rover) headed for Mars this summer. And, late last year, it tested its most powerful rocket, called Long March-5. This heavy-lift rocket took a large satellite to orbit and ultimately can be used to send along China’s Mars orbiter on its way.
The Mars mission is reported to have a cost of about $39 million (in U.S. dollars). It’s the first of several that will bring China to parity with the U.S. in terms of Mars remote exploration.
Crewed Missions to the Red Planet
Will China want to send people to Mars? That’s an interesting question. They haven’t played that card publicly yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if eventual human exploration isn’t on their agenda. The Chinese have built a Mars simulator training area in the Gobi desert, called Mars Base 1. It serves the same function (to give astronauts a taste of what living and work on Mars is like) that other bases in Utah, Canada, and Antarctica have done for NASA explorers. Check out more about the Gobi desert camp in this video.
China and Near-Earth Space
As I mentioned in my last article, China has robust plans for human exploration of near-Earth space. The country has sent humans to space and certainly wants to get a crewed space station up and running. China will be testing a next-generation crew spacecraft this year. This will be useful for transporting both people and goods up to the new space station in the Tiangong program. It is already testing on the design of the main body of the station, which will advance those plans even further.
Where China goes—as in, working on a trans-Mars ship, exploring a near-Earth asteroid (as it has plans to do), is an interesting discussion. It also plans a possible probe out to the gas giant Jupiter, is all in the future beyond 2020. At the moment, China has signaled interest in resuming talks with the United States. Not just about trade, but also on areas of mutual concern in space exploration. And, there has been some collaboration between the U.S. and Chinese scientists on the lunar-based Change’-4 mission when it landed. China has indicated for years that it is open to collaboration on more science with anyone who will cooperate with it.
In the meantime, the Chinese National Space Agency has a good blueprint for exploration. It continues working on its future missions to near-Earth space, the Moon, Mars, and beyond.