In a first, China announced to build space station at Moon
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BEIJING – China announced today (April 24) to send people on a manned mission to the moon alongside building research station there within the next decade.
Citing a top space official, China aims to achieve space superpower status and took a major step towards that goal when it became the first nation to land a rover on the far side of the moon in January.
It now plans to build a scientific research station on the moon s South Pole within the next 10 years, China National Space Administration head Zhang Kejian said during a speech marking "Space Day", the official Xinhua news agency reported.
AFP reported that he also added that Beijing plans to launch a Mars probe by 2020 and confirmed that a fourth lunar probe, the Chang e-5, will be launched by the end of the year.
Originally scheduled to collect moon samples in the second half of 2017, the Chang e-5 was delayed after its planned carrier, the powerful Long March 5 Y2 rocket, failed during a separate launch in July 2017.
China on Wednesday also announced its Long March-5B rocket will make its maiden flight in the first half of 2020, carrying the core parts of a planned space station.
The Tiangong -- or "Heavenly Palace" -- will go into orbit in 2022, the China Manned Space Engineering Office said.
