A Long March-2F service rocket, carrying the Shenzhou-15 spacecraft with three astronauts to China’s Tiangong space station, lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwest China’s Gansu Province late on November 29, 2022. When Chang’e-3 grew to become the primary Chinese craft to land on the Moon 10 years in the past, it kicked off nationwide celebrations — and a decade of main successes for a quickly accelerating space programme. Since the December 14, 2013 touchdown, China has constructed a crewed space station, despatched a robotic rover to Mars and develop into the primary nation to make a managed touchdown on the far aspect of the Moon.
| Photo Credit: AFP
When Chang’e-3 grew to become the primary Chinese craft to land on the Moon 10 years in the past, it kicked off nationwide celebrations — and a decade of main successes for a quickly accelerating space programme.
Since the December 14, 2013 touchdown, China has constructed a crewed space station, despatched a robotic rover to Mars and develop into the primary nation to make a managed touchdown on the far aspect of the Moon.
President Xi Jinping has described constructing China right into a space energy as “our eternal dream”.
Here are 5 things to know about this space programme:
A sluggish begin
Chinese chief Mao Zedong declared his nation’s space ambitions quickly after the Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite tv for pc, Sputnik 1, in 1957.
It took 13 years for China to launch its first satellite tv for pc Dong Fang Hong, or “The East is Red” — named after the well-known Communist revolutionary music it broadcast from orbit.
It was not till the late Eighties that the programme started to choose up tempo, alongside China’s ascent into the world’s richest and strongest nations.
Overseen by the army, its secretive space programme’s targets grew to become extra formidable. In 1992, it formally started a venture to ship people into space.
‘Taikonauts’
More than three many years after its first satellite tv for pc launch, on October 15, 2003, Yang Liwei grew to become the primary Chinese to journey into space, and an prompt nationwide hero.
With the success of his Shenzhou 5 mission, China grew to become solely the third nation after the United States and Russia to reveal the flexibility to launch people into space.
In complete, 20 Chinese astronauts have made the journey into space, together with two ladies. State media have used the time period “taikonaut” to describe China’s spacefarers.
Many of them have journeyed to Tiangong, China’s first long-term space station whose building was accomplished final yr.
Though a lot smaller than the International Space Station, it accommodates residing quarters for a rotating crew, robotic arms and airlocks for conducting spacewalks.
To the Moon
China has additionally despatched exploration missions to the Moon.
Named after the Moon goddess in Chinese folklore, Chang’e-3 touched down on the floor in 2013, making China solely the third nation to efficiently land there.
Two different milestones adopted. In 2019, China grew to become the primary nation to make a managed touchdown on the far aspect of the Moon with Chang’e-4.
A yr later, Chang’e-5 introduced the primary lunar samples to Earth in additional than 40 years.
Chinese space authorities have stated they plan to land people on the Moon by 2030, in addition to construct a lunar base.
Mars and deep space
One of probably the most spectacular successes of the Chinese space programme got here in 2021 when its Tianwen-1 mission landed a rover named Zhurong on the floor of Mars.
China is barely the second nation after the United States to put a robotic rover on the Red Planet.
Officials have stated they intention to ship a crewed mission there by 2033.
Aside from landers and orbiters, China is quickly anticipated to launch a space telescope named Xuntian.
Orbiting shut to the Tiangong space station, with which it may well dock, Xuntian is predicted to have a subject of view far larger than NASA’s Hubble telescope.
Defence and status
While China says it opposes the weaponisation of space, its coverage makers have additionally recognized space as essential to nationwide defence and safety.
Its army is a core participant within the nationwide space programme, and China is creating spy satellites, anti-satellite missiles and digital warfare capabilities, in accordance to the US army.
China “sees counterspace operations as a means to deter and counter a US intervention during a regional military conflict”, the Pentagon stated in a report to Congress this yr.
And past the direct functions of those applied sciences, China considers success in space as a significant driver of its picture as a worldwide energy at dwelling and overseas.
“National prestige is perhaps one of the most important, if not the most important, motives driving Chinese space ambitions,” stated R. Lincoln Hines, an assistant professor on the Georgia Institute of Technology within the United States.
“These symbols of increasing international status provide a powerful form of domestic propaganda.”
