China on Friday unveiled plans to send a rover to Mars around 2020 to explore the Red Planet and launch 150 long range carrier rockets in the next five years for its ambitious space missions.
“The Mars probe is expected to orbit the red planet, land and deploy a rover all in one mission, which 1is quite difficult to achieve,” Xu Dazhe, director of the National Space Administration told the media here.
Mr. Xu said the Chinese government has the Mars mission in early this year.
Stressing the mission’s importance and difficulty, he said that although China has sent spacecraft deep into space, “only by completing this Mars probe mission can China say it has embarked on the exploration of deep space in the true sense.”
India has become the first Asian country after Mangalyan reached the red planet joining U.S., European Union and Russia which have sent successful missions to Mars.
China tried to launch its Mars probe Yinghuo—1 in 2011 along with Russian Fobos—Grunt from Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan but it was declared lost.
Also, China will launch about 150 of its Long March carrier rockets over the next five years.
“In the 13th five-year plan period (2016—2020), we will see about 30 launches (of the Long March series) each year,” Chen Xuechuan, assistant president of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation said ahead of celebrations marking the launch of China’s first satellite 46 years ago.
There were 86 Long March missions in the five years from 2011 to 2015, and 48 from 2006 to 2010.
Mr. Chen said China is quickly catching up with other countries after being a relative latecomer in human space endeavours.
The launch of the SJ—10 retrievable scientific research satellite earlier this month marked the 226th mission of the Long March rocket family, and the pace of launches is accelerating.
“Our first 100 Long March missions took us 37 years. But it only took us seven years to complete the latest 100,” Mr. Chen said.
This year alone, China will conduct more than 20 space missions, including launching two navigation satellites, and a satellite designed for high-definition Earth observation.
China’s second orbiting space lab, Tiangong-2, will also be launched in fall this year and it is scheduled to dock with manned spacecraft Shenzhou-11 in the fourth quarter.
In addition, two new-generation Long March rockets, the heavy-lift Long March—5 and the medium—sized Long March—7, will also make their maiden space trips this year, according to Mr. Chen.
China’s first Space Day has been scheduled for April 24, the day in 1970 on which Dong Fang Hong 1, or The East is Red 1, was launched into Earth orbit on a Long March rocket.
