China aims for moon probe
China is starting work on a satellite to orbit the moon by 2007 and plans to land a lunar probe by 2010, a space official said in Beijing today.
The Chinese government is also studying plans to have an unmanned craft return with samples of the lunar surface by 2020, said Sun Laiyan, vice administrator of the China National Space Administration.
The satellite is meant to make detailed images of the lunar surface and study its composition, Sun said.
“After the lunar flyby, we would proceed to landing and returning,” Sun said at a news conference. “These two stages are under intense review, which means that 2010 and 2020 are the probable times for these two missions.”
Sun was speaking a day after China opened a new phase in its civilian space programme with the launch of its first research satellite developed with the European Space Agency. The satellite is to be one of a pair that studies the Earth’s magnetic field.
China’s once-secretive space programme, a key prestige project for the communist government, has talked more openly about its plans since the successful flight in October of the country’s first manned space capsule.
Astronaut Yang Liwei circled the earth for 21 hours before landing in the country’s northern grasslands.
Sun stressed that all the moon missions under consideration would be unmanned. The programme’s director had suggested in a speech in November that China might be planning to land a human on the moon by 2020, but the agency has denied that.
Sun also reaffirmed China’s intention, announced previously, to launch a second manned space flight within the next two years.
