​Even if the Zhurong rover appears to be stuck on the surface of Mars since it hasn’t moved since last summer, according to images taken by the US Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Tianwen-1, China’s first Mars mission remains a success, at least for the fact that they succeeded on the first try in a shootout. And although China’s space station is in low Earth orbit, China has interplanetary ambitions.

It’s highly unlikely that we’ll see a taikonaut set foot on the moon in the next decade, but that doesn’t mean we won’t have some interesting space missions from China. At the end of this year, the new Chang Zheng 5B rocket will launch the Xuntian Space Telescope into Earth orbit. It will compete with Hubble with a 2-meter diameter mirror and will be located near the Tianwen Space Station, meaning astronauts will be able to approach Xuntian and repair it if necessary, or upgrade it so that the future telescope is modular, meaning designed so that astronauts can upgrade him in the future. And yes, since it will be launched on a Chang Zheng 5B rocket, that means we’ll once again be watching where the rocket’s debris will fall after it detaches from the space telescope.

Next year, the Chang’e-6 probe will be sent to the moon to return with samples of lunar soil. If Chang’e-5 succeeds in delivering lunar regolith from Oceanus Procellarum to Earth in 2020, Chang’e-6 will be sent to the South Pole of the Moon, where the US and China plan to send crews for future missions.

Chang’e-6 is a probe similar to Chang’e-5, created as a duplicate of it in case Chang’e-5 fails before the mission is completed. Fortunately, this was not the case, so the Chang’e-6 probe will be used in a new mission, and this time European science equipment (from France, Sweden and Italy) will also be on board. It remains to be seen whether the Queqiao relay satellite will still be operational to support this mission, or whether China will launch its successor, Queqiao-2. Located at the L2 Earth-Moon Langrange point, the relay satellite is required for lunar missions to the far side of the Moon or to the Moon’s South Pole.

In 2025, the Tianwen-2 probe will be launched and fly by asteroids 469219 Kamoʻoalewa and 311P/PanSTARRS. Both bodies are extremely interesting: 469219 Kamoʻoalewa is a quasi-satellite of Earth, meaning that although it is an asteroid, it orbits the Sun in an orbit similar to that of Earth and does not appear to be too far from our planet. A planetary companion, if you want to call it that. And Tianwen-2 will not only observe the asteroid from afar, but also try to land on it and take a few tens of grams of soil. Tianwen-2 will then return to Earth to deliver soil sample capsules before heading to 311P/PanSTARRS. It is what is called an active asteroid or a type of comet: although it is located in the asteroid belt and looks like an asteroid, it behaves like a comet, meaning it has a tail!

The Chang’e-7 mission, due to launch in 2026, will continue preparations for future manned missions to the Moon. That’s because Chang’e-7 has two components: an orbital probe and a lander that will also land on the South Pole of the Moon. From orbit, detailed studies of the South Pole of the Moon will be conducted, where China hopes to find a suitable location for a future base.

Tianwen-3, China’s third interplanetary mission, will mark China’s return to Mars with a plan to collect and return Martian soil samples to Earth, a less complex mission than Mars Sample Return (MSR, a mission run by NASA and ESA). China originally said Tianwen-3 would deliver Martian soil samples to Earth ahead of a similar US-European mission, but Tianwen-3’s launch date was recently pushed back to 2028, meaning MSR has the first chance to be the mission to bring the first Martian soil samples.

The Chang’e-8 mission is planned for 2030, which, in addition to the orbital probe, will include a lunar rover and a 3D printer. With this printer, China hopes that by using lunar regolith as raw material, it will be able to test in situ the printing of components needed to build a permanent structure. As I said above, the plan is long-term, with the ultimate goal of creating a lunar base for future taikonaut missions.

Also in 2030, China hopes to launch its first interstellar probe, Tianwen-4, which will fly past the planets Jupiter and Uranus, then follow the path of Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and New Horizons, and finally leave the solar system.

I’ll end with a guess, since we don’t have official data yet: the first taikonaut crews will probably set foot on the surface of the moon sometime after 2035. Until then, China is hard at work on two massive rockets capable of piloting missions to the Moon: the Chang Zheng 5DY and Changzheng 9, which will reach the launch pad around 2030 (although the Chang Zheng 5DY, being a derivative of the Chang Zheng 5, is at a more advanced stage and we can see it earlier).

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