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June 25, 2021

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China eyes crewed mission to Mars in 2033

Source: Agencies | 00:14 UTC+8 June 25, 2021 | Print Edition

CHINA aims to send its first crewed mission to Mars in 2033, with regular flights to follow, under a long-term plan to build a permanently inhabited base on the red planet and extract its resources.

The ambitious plan was disclosed in detail for the first time after China landed a robotic rover on Mars in mid-May in its inaugural mission to the planet.

Crewed launches to Mars are planned for 2033, 2035, 2037, 2041 and beyond, the head of China’s main rocket maker, Wang Xiaojun, told the Global Space Exploration Conference in Russia recently by video link.

Before the crewed missions begin, China will send robots to Mars to study possible sites for the base and to build systems to extract resources there, the official China Space News reported on Wednesday, citing Wang, who is head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology.

For human inhabitation on Mars, crews would have to be able to use the planet’s resources, such as extracting any water beneath its surface, generating oxygen on-site and producing electricity.

China must also develop technology to fly astronauts back to Earth.

An uncrewed round-trip mission to acquire soil samples from the planet is expected by the end of 2030.

The US space agency NASA has been developing technology to get a crew to Mars and back sometime in the 2030s.

China’s Mars plan envisages fleets of spacecraft shuttling between Earth and Mars and major development of its resources, Wang said.

To shorten the travel time, spacecraft would have to tap energy released from nuclear reactions in the form of heat and electricity, in addition to traditional chemical propellants, Wang said.

China would have to accomplish round trips with a total flight time of “a few hundred days,” he said.

Also, a Sky Ladder system, according to Wang, is under study, as a starting point for such a space voyage, in a bid to reduce the scale of Mars probe and transport missions.

The academy did not elaborate on the Sky Ladder system.

Technologies like the Sky Ladder delivery system have been mentioned before, as some scientists believe it would transport humans and goods to the moon for just 4 percent of the current cost.

Xinhua Global Service has illustrated the process in computer graphic footage. It shows a manned or cargo space capsule traveling along a carbon nanotube “ladder” to reach a space station before it is relaunched from the space station.

Then the capsule would reach a second space station and travel along the second rung of the “ladder” to the moon.

China disclosed earlier in June that it is making plans for future development of its space program, including exploring asteroids and the Jovian system, collecting samples from Mars and exploring the polar region of the moon, according to the China National Space Administration.

China plans to launch a Mars sample-return mission and a Jovian system exploration mission sometime around 2030, said the administration officials.

Last week, China sent three astronauts to an unfinished space station in its first crewed mission since 2016.

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