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Showing posts with label Mars mission. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mars mission. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 15, 2020

US versus China – in outer space



New frontier: A November 2019 file photo presented on Monday showing China’s Mars lander's hovering, obstacle avoidance and deceleration capabilities being tested at a facility in Huailai, Hebei province. China is scheduled to launch its Mars rover and an orbiter around July 23 in a mission named Tianwen, or ‘Questions for Heaven’. – AP

IF you have been too preoccupied with all the awful stuff happening on Earth, you might have missed something that is shaping up. Up, as in up in space.

I did and it was only recently I caught up somewhat with the New Space Race. That was when I stumbled across the January graduation ceremony of the first class of 13 astronaut candidates comprising seven men and six women under the Artemis programme.

This is the long-awaited successor to the 1960s and 1970s Apollo missions by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa). Artemis – goddess of the moon and twin sister of Apollo – is Nasa’s plan to finally return to Earth’s closest celestial body.

The first man to land on the moon was, of course, Neil Armstrong on July 20,1969, and that historic occasion marked the winner of the first space race between the United States and Russia (or USSR as it was then called).

I still remember the excitement of watching RTM’s delayed telecast of the very grainy footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing. I was all of 10 years old.

The subsequent Apollo missions were very much part of my teenage years, but with the exception of the near disaster of Apollo 13, none of them came close to the global excitement over Apollo 11’s achievement.

That feat will be exactly 51 years old come Monday. Since Dec 14,1972, when Apollo 17 landed, no humans have visited the Moon.

While the six Moon missions did deliver much scientific data and 382kg of lunar soil samples, the race to the moon was essentially a politically-motivated contest to prove American technological prowess over Russian and once achieved, the enormously expensive one-upmanship (total cost was US$20bil) was over.

Nasa went on to do other great stuff like Skylab, the space shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS), which is still going strong after 20 years.

Without a doubt, for the last 50 years, the United States has held dominance in space exploration. But its pole position is now being challenged in the new space race.

This time it’s between the US and – no surprise – China, which also has its eye on the moon and beyond.

When China sent its first yuhangyuan (meaning “space navigator”) into orbit in the early 2000s, the West chuckled. They wondered what they would do during the flight and a think tank analyst guessed they would do some “physical exercises” and “space medicine-type things”.

No one is laughing now. In January last year, China landed its Chang’e 4 lunar lander on the far side of the moon, the first ever by any nation. (Chang’e is the Chinese moon goddess.)

From there, the Jade Rabbit 2 rover was able to transmit data back to Earth via a satellite that had been previously deployed around the moon for this purpose.

With that successful landing, China proved it has become a force to be reckoned with, which was President Xi Jinping’s declared intention in 2016 – to make China a “space giant” with the Moon as the vital centrepiece.

On May 5, China successfully launched its Long March-5B rocket, which is designed to ultimately transport astronauts into space. That was quickly followed by back-to-back launches of Earth-imaging satellites.

It might have faced a setback when its Kuaizhou-11 rocket carrying low-orbit remote sensing satellites failed to launch on July 10, but that won’t derail China’s plans to launch 60 spacecraft in over 40 launches this year.

What’s more, China plans to have its own space station in operation by the end of 2022. While Nasa partners with several other national space agencies on the International Space Station and welcomes newbie astronauts from many countries, including Malaysia, no yuhangyuan has been allowed on board.

China’s space station will orbit the moon to give it what is known as cislunar domination. Cislunar refers to the space between the earth and the moon and the moon’s orbit. If China succeeds, it will have the space equivalent of the Silk Road, because once cislunar is secured, it can develop a sustainable presence on the moon for in-space manufacturing, mineral extraction, and space-based solar power (SBSP) technology. From that, it can leap into deep space exploration and stage manned missions to Mars.

Nasa’s Artemis programme too has big plans for a permanent station orbiting the moon called the Gateway that would be instrumental to its ambition to send its first manned mission to Mars.

To do that, President Donald Trump proposed a US$4.7bil (RM20bil) budget submission for Nasa for 2021 so that Artemis can ensure “the next man and the first woman on the moon will be American astronauts (by 2024) – using this as a launching pad to ensure America is the first nation to plant its flag on Mars” by 2033.

But the Democrat-controlled Congress isn’t playing ball and wants to push the return-to-moon target date to 2028 because they don’t want it to be a Trump triumph.

This is the rare Trump initiative I actually like and how that will pan out, like his re-election, remains to be seen. But the space race is definitely on. There are other serious players, namely India and the newest – and I must say surprising – contender, the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Russia, while maintaining a presence with its participation in the ISS, is by all accounts no longer a serious contender as its space agency Roscosmos is beset with corruption and mismanagement.

In 2014, India’s Space Research Organisation beat China in putting out a satellite in orbit around Mars, becoming the fourth national space agency to reach Mars. In the pipeline is the launch of its first crewed orbital space craft named Gaganyaan by 2022.

Today the UAE will launch its first mission to Mars: A spacecraft called Hope that will orbit the Red Planet to study its atmosphere and weather.

Undoubtedly, there are great bragging rights for a nation that has the means to undertake space exploration, truly the final frontier.

To be fair, the US has been very magnanimous in freely sharing Nasa’s inventions and innovations with the rest of the world. These include baby formula, scratch resistant lenses, artificial limbs, camera phones, athletic shoes, wireless headsets, water purification systems, the computer mouse and freeze-dried food. Just check out inventions we use every day that were actually created for space exploration on usatoday.com or bit.ly/spacethings.

I do wonder whether China will be as magnanimous?

YouTuber and former Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer Mark Rober aptly sums up what he considers the five best reasons for space exploration in his video, “Is Nasa a waste of money?”

The one that seems the most far-fetched yet most compelling is finding habitable planets that humans can live on to prevent humanity’s extinction. Earth could be destroyed by a meteor strike or by our own human doing, a possibility which has become more real with the Covid-19 pandemic and worsening climate change.

But space exploration is no longer the sole domain of governments. Increasingly, private sector entities like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Roger Zhang Changwu’s LandSpace have become important players and collaborators.

Still, instead of Artemis versus Chang’e, I wish the US and China can resolve their differences and work together on their space ambitions for the good of humankind instead of turning space into the latest battleground for economic and military supremacy.

I had a glimpse of the future of space exploration in 1995. That was when I visited the Johnson Space Center in Houston and saw the prototype design for the ISS.

That was in my lifetime, as was the 1969 moon landing. I may live long enough to see the first woman to walk on the Moon but perhaps not the Mars manned mission.

That saddens me but it also thrills me to know that it will happen. Bon voyage, astronauts and yuhangyuan!

The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.

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NASA chief says Russia ties 'solid' as Moscow's space chief rejects U.S.-led moon programmeRead more:




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Live: China's inaugurates first Mars exploration mission Tianwen-1 in southern Hainan Province https://youtu.be/V9BsqPqqQbg Mi.

Friday, November 15, 2019

China successfully completes lander tests, preparing for Mars mission in 2020 as it pushes for inclusion in global space projects

China unveils its 2020 Mars probe
https://youtu.be/hdj8-XSOAg8

A lander for China's Mars mission is seen before a hovering-and-obstacle avoidance test at a test facility in Huailai, Hebei province, China November 14, 2019. REUTERS/Jason Lee
https://youtu.be/6H00j4Cub1g

HUAILAI, China (Reuters) - China on Thursday successfully completed a lander test in northern Hebei province ahead of an unmanned exploration mission to Mars next year.

China is on track to launch its Mars mission in 2020, Zhang Kejian, head of the China National Space Administration, said on Thursday. Zhang was speaking ahead of the hovering-and-obstacle avoidance test for the lander.

The journey through space will take about seven months, while landing will take seven minutes, said Zhang Rongqiao, chief architect of the Mars exploration programme.

The test was conducted at a sprawling landing test site in Huailai, northwest of Beijing.

China has developed the powerful Long March 5 rocket to transport the probe to Mars in 2020.

The same rocket is meant to deliver the Chang'e-5 probe to the moon by the end of 2019 or early next year to bring back samples of lunar rocks.

The Chang'e-4 probe successfully touched down on the far side of the moon in January this year, a historic first and major achievement for China's space programme.

China made its first lunar landing in 2013.

China expects to complete a modular space station around 2022, around the time when NASA is said to start building a new space station laboratory to orbit the moon, as a pit stop for missions to other parts of the solar system.

In 2003, China became the third nation to put a man in space with its own rocket after the former Soviet Union and the United States.

Since then, it has been racing to catch up with Russia and the United States and become a major space power by 2030.

(Reporting by Martin Pollard; Writing by Ryan Woo and Liangping Gao; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)


China preparing for Mars mission in global space projects



It’s a success: A lander being lifted during a test at a facility in Hebei province. — AP

HUAILAI: China invited observers to a successful test of its Mars lander as the country pushes for inclusion in more global space projects.

The demonstration of hovering, obstacle avoidance and deceleration capabilities was conducted at a site outside Beijing simulating conditions on the Red Planet, where the pull of gravity is about one-third that of Earth.

China plans to launch a lander and rover to Mars next year to explore parts of the planet in detail.

China’s burgeoning space programme achieved a lunar milestone earlier this year by landing a probe on the mysterious far side of the moon.

It has developed rapidly, especially since it conducted its first crewed mission in 2003 and has sought cooperation with space agencies from Europe and elsewhere.

The US, however, has banned most space cooperation with China out of national security concerns, keeping China from participating in the International Space Station.

Despite that, China’s ambitions continue to grow as it seeks to rival the US, Russia and Europe in space and cement its position as a regional and global power. It is gradually constructing its own larger, more permanent space station in which it has invited foreign participation.

The lander yesterday successfully avoided ground obstacles during a simulated low-gravity descent, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the Chinese space programme’s main contractor.

The refrigerator-sized craft was lowered gently on 36 cables through the air for about a minute and used onboard jets spraying rust-coloured fumes to alter its downward course.

“After the probe is launched, it will take about seven months to reach Mars, and the final procedure of landing will only last about seven minutes, which is the most difficult and the most risky part of the whole mission, ” said the Mars mission’s chief designer, Zhang Rongqiao, standing before the 140m-tall testing facility.

Recent rover crashes on the moon by Israel and India highlight the difficulties of safe landings from space.

The remote Comprehensive Testing Ground for Landing on Extraterrestrial Bodies run by CASC lies an hour north of the Great Wall from Beijing.

Guests at yesterday’s event came from 19 countries and included the ambassadors of Brazil, France and Italy. — AP

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