China eyes Mars Mission by 2020

China has drawn up plans to send a rover to Mars around 2020 to explore the Red Planet and, also, launch 150 long range carrier rockets in the next five years as a part of its ambitious space missions. Director of the National Space Administration has indicated that the Mars probe will orbit the red planet, land and deploy a rover all in one mission - it is expected to be a mission difficult to achieve.
This has been reported in timesofindia.indiatimes.com dated 22 April 2016.

India has already earned accolades for becoming the first Asian country after it sent Mangalyan to the red planet and, thus,entered the august league nations like the US, European Union and Russia which have sent successful missions to Mars. China did make an attempt to launch its Mars probe Yinghuo-1 in 2011 along with Russian Fobos-Grunt from Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan but, unfortunately, it was declared lost.
Along with the Mars mission of 2020, China has plans to launch about 150 of its Long March carrier rockets over the next five years. It will be a part of its 13th five-year plan period (2016-2020). In that period, there will be about 30 launches (of the Long March series) every year. This has been announced by assistant president of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
He indicated that there were 86 Long March missions in the five years from 2011 to 2015, and 48 from 2006 to 2010. Obviously, it can be said that China is fast catching up with other countries after being a relative latecomer in human space endeavours.
Incidentally, it has launched the SJ-10 retrievable scientific research satellite earlier this month - it was to mark the 226th mission of the Long March rocket family. Incidentally, the pace of launches is accelerating because, while the first 100 Long March missions took 37 years, the next 100 came within just seven years.
Moreover, China's second orbiting space lab, Tiangong-2, will be launched in fall this year and it is scheduled to dock with manned spacecraft Shenzhou-11 in the fourth quarter.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org

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