Jun 26, 2014 |
China aims for rover on Mars by 2020
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(Nanowerk News) China plans to land a rover vehicle on Mars in 2020 and bring back soil samples from the planet a decade later, a top scientist with the country’s lunar probe mission said yesterday.
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The Mars probe will release both an orbiter and a landing rover, which will explore the planet jointly, said Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist with the Chang’e lunar mission and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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The main goals of the mission will be to check for life, both current and previous, and to assess the planet’s environment, Ouyang said at a meeting in Beijing.
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"The mission will also mark the beginning of China’s deeper voyages into outer space,” he said.
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Chinese scientists will also begin probing the activities of the sun to determine its influence on the near-Earth space atmosphere, he said.
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Ye Peijian, chief scientist with the Chang’e-3 program, said earlier this year that China already has the capability to explore Mars.
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The tracking control and communications technology is in place to send a probe into orbit and then land it on the Red Planet, he said.
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Ground stations have been improved and problems concerning control and communications have been resolved.
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Much of the progress was made during the second phase of the lunar program, Ye said.
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At its closest point, which happens every 26 months, Mars is about 60 million kilometers from Earth. The journey time for a probe is about 10 months.
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A Russian probe carrying China’s first Mars satellite Yinghuo-1 failed to reach its intended orbit after its launch in 2011.
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A problem occurred after the Phobos-Grunt probe separated from the Zenit-2SB launch vehicle but failed to use its own booster in order to reach the designated orbit.
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Meanwhile, China is making preparations for the 2017 launch of its lunar probe Chang’e-5.
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Part of the country’s third-phase lunar program, the probe is expected to bring back moon rock samples.
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Ye said that achieving this would be “a historic moment” for the country.
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