new media: what does china’s mars exploration timetable indicate in advance?
2024-09-30
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reference news network reported on september 27singapore's straits times website published an article on september 23 titled "the race to the red planet: china has advanced the timetable for its mars exploration mission to show its confidence in its country's space exploration capabilities." the author is huang ziyun. the full text is excerpted as follows:
the space race to mars is heating up. china's announcement that its mars sample return mission will be carried out two years ahead of schedule shows that it is increasingly confident in its ability to carry out highly complex interstellar exploration missions before other countries.
china said the tianwen-3 mission is planned to be launched "around 2028," two years earlier than the previous estimate of 2030. experts said that if the tianwen-3 mission succeeds, it will be a historic first and consolidate china's outstanding capabilities in deep space exploration.
meanwhile, china's main rival in space exploration, the united states, is planning a similar mars sample retrieval mission, but the mission has been hampered by major technical challenges and growing budget issues.
nasa's mars sample retrieval mission is thrown into uncertainty after an independent review board review found that the mission's projected cost could grow to $11 billion and that it may not be completed until 2040.
coupled with the fact that the optimal launch time period for a mars exploration mission—that is, the period when mars and the earth’s orbits are closest—occurs only once every 26 months, people have a sense of the feasibility of nasa’s mars sample retrieval mission. to worry.
clayton swope, deputy director of the aerospace security program at the center for strategic and international studies, said: “with nasa’s mars sample retrieval mission delayed, beijing seems to have decided that this is a battle that it can the race to win.”
he added: "if china can complete the mars sample return mission before other countries, it will be of great significance. this will become an achievement recorded in history."
swope said china may not believe there are any major moon-related "firsts." he said that even if china puts a man on the moon, it will be behind the united states, which has already accomplished this feat.
however, mars exploration is a brand new competition, and china still has a chance to win first place. swope said: “china hopes to show that it is becoming the world’s most important space power and becoming the first country in the world to complete a certain space mission, such as the mars sample return mission. it will definitely become china’s largest space power in space. a symbol of the rapid rise of the field.”
china's accelerated pace of space ambitions has sparked concerns in the united states about beijing's geopolitical intentions in what nasa's administrator has called a new "space race" and worries that china wants to assert territorial claims in outer space and exploit them. its capabilities in space exploration seek political and military benefits.
an article published by chinese media in january this year stated that china has no intention to participate in the "space race" imagined by the united states. the article stated that after the united states and its allies engaged in geopolitics to contain china on earth under the banner of the so-called "rules-based international order," they are now sending this strategy into outer space.
professor quentin parker, an astrophysicist and director of the university of hong kong's space laboratory, said that china's intentions in space exploration are increasing, and china's willingness to expand international cooperation is also increasing.
parker mentioned china's willingness to share lunar soil samples collected from the far side of the moon with the united states. he said: "this shows that china has shown an appropriate degree of openness in sharing scientific research materials to advance our understanding of the moon."
as for why china decided to advance the schedule of its mars exploration mission, parker said: "i'm not sure the reason for this kind of situation, but it is obvious that the pace of china's space exploration is accelerating."
while it's unclear how the u.s. will respond to china's revised mars exploration mission schedule, parker noted that the u.s. has extended the aging international space station's orbital time beyond the initial completion of china's tiangong space station by the end of 2022. scheduled run time.
in today’s “race” to mars — an often used but not well-defined concepts – there is no single clear end goal, and benchmarks are constantly changing.
ben-yitzhak said that more and more countries are participating in mars exploration. in addition to the united states and china, countries and institutions such as russia, japan, the united arab emirates and the european space agency have all carried out mars exploration missions individually or jointly. (compiled/hu xue)
