With a budget of $ 24 billion and dozens of active, high-profile missions, it’s no wonder NASA is the most visible of the world’s dozens of government space agencies. But China’s space program is a rapidly developing superpower that, whether through political tensions or careful control of information by the government, often does not receive its fair share of attention.
Just this week, the National Space Administration of China (CNSA) released a series of high-resolution images of Mars taken by its Tianwen-1 spacecraft, which arrived on the red planet in February 2021 and since since then it has been orbiting it. Over more than 1,300 orbits, Tianwen-1 has photographed the entire planet in extreme detail, from the icy South Pole to the 2,485-mile-long Valles Marineris canyon to the 59,055-foot Ascraeus Mons shield volcano. .
While the United States has the reliable Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and other spacecraft have made images of the planet over the years, the full-surface survey of China’s program will be valuable to scientists and colony planners around the world. the world if the country publishes the images widely. But this is just the latest success of a thriving space program that has ambitious goals for the next five years, and perhaps not even the most impressive.
The fact that Tianwen-1 even reached Mars is remarkable, as it was China’s first solo interplanetary mission. (China participated in a failed joint mission with Russia, Phobos-Grunt / Yinghuo-1, which was launched in 2011 but did not leave Earth orbit.) In general, missions to Mars, from overflights to orbiters and landers, have about a 50% success rate, according to NASA.
Mars cannon
The Marineris Valley cannon on Mars, photographed by China’s Tianwen-1. Image credits: CNSA via Reuters
The Tianwen-1 also brought with it the Zhurong rover, which landed on the Martian surface on May 15, 2021, making China the third country to land on Mars, after the former Soviet Union and the United States. . (It’s worth mentioning: while the Soviet rover landed on the surface, it never worked.) Zhurong, on the other hand, has been exploring the Utopia Planitia basin for more than a year, although he entered in a winter hibernation last month.
The story goes on
Closer to home, China has also been successful on the Moon, becoming the first nation to attempt to gently land a probe on the dark side of the Moon, which never faces Earth. And he got it. The Chang’e 4 landing landed on the lunar surface on January 3, 2019, carrying with it the Yutu-2 rover, which is actively exploring the Von Kármán crater.
craters of Mars
Craters in the Arabian Land region of Mars, photographed by China’s Tianwen-1. Image credits: CNSA via Reuters
And even closer to home than the Moon, China is developing its own space station in low Earth orbit; China is especially banned from the International Space Station due to a 2011 Department of Defense law that prohibits NASA from collaborating with the nation unless specifically authorized. . The first module of China’s Tiangong space station, Tianhe, was launched in May 2021, and the CNSA suggests that the two final modules, Mengtian and Wentian, will be launched later this year. Since then, two crews of taikonauts (the Chinese version of the astronauts) have completed long-term missions to the station, while a third is currently on board for a six-month stay.
The government’s lack of transparency may contribute to China’s lack of attention to space program. Many missions have not been announced until the last moment, and the especially risky ones are not usually televised; that way, errors can be kept fairly quiet. Other private space flight agencies and companies are much more open in their current and future projects, sharing successes and failures alike. (NASA, for example, almost always offers a live stream of crucial mission moments, such as launches and landings).
south pole of Mars
The South Pole of Mars, photographed by China’s Tianwen-1. Image credits: CNSA via Reuters
But with so much success in its belt, the CNSA is becoming more open about its plans. In January 2022, the administration released a white paper entitled “China’s Space Program: A 2021 Perspective,” which shared both successes from 2016 and plans for the next five years. Interestingly, the CNSA also acknowledged some of its failures in the white paper; noted that only 183 of the more than 400 launch attempts between 2016 and 2021 were successful.
Looking ahead to the next half of the decade, China plans to launch the Xuntian Space Telescope, which will be docked at the Tiangong Space Station; the return mission of the ZengHe asteroid sample; and several lunar probes. China has also promoted the planning of a manned lunar mission, which could make it the second country to land humans on the moon.
Sure, project deadlines in the space industry are often delayed, but it looks like the Chinese space program has a few busy years ahead of it.