Race to Mars: China to join India
China to land Rover on Mars by 2020, India to send another by 2018
In traditional Chinese fashion, China has announced plans to follow suite of India’s successful MOM (Mars Orbiter Mission) and NASA’s Rover Mission by sending a larger, tougher and better climbing rover to the red planet by the year 2020.
NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity at work Source
Ouyang Ziyuan, lead researcher in China’s Moon Mission, told the state-run Xinhua News that “China plans to land a Mars rover around 2020, collect samples and bring them back around 2030.”
A life size model of the rover was unveiled to the public recently at the 2014 Airshow China held in Zhuhai city, confirming China’s plans to join India and the US.
Life size model of the Chinese Mars Rover. Picture Source: Flickr – Tech Radar
China has already had successful space missions to the Moon and to build its own space station, but has previously failed in an endeavor to reach Mars with an unsuccessful probe mission in 2011. It looked like China had given up on the Mars mission, but the recent success of India’s Mangalyaan Mission seems to have spurred China on to recreate India’s success.
Recently, ISRO announced that plans for a second mission are under consideration and that this time around they plan to send a Rover to Mars by the year 2018.
The Chinese Mars rover will be sent on an exploratory mission to search for life and water. The already successful NASA mission has the same objectives as the Chinese rover, but the Chinese Mars mission will only cost a fraction of the multi-billion dollar NASA investment.
Another interesting aspect will be the competition between the Chinese Mars program and the lunar program for government funding. It remains to be seen how quickly they can acquire the funding to actually meet the milestones for a 2020 launch.
Panorama View from NASA’s MARS Rover Source
The race is on, India vs China, who will succeed in sending a rover to the red planet? Who will get there first? A race in space! Things couldn’t any more exciting! Stay tuned, OWN will keep updating you on any new developments.
