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Agence France-Presse

The plunge back to Earth of a defunct Chinese space laboratory will not slow down Beijing’s ambitious plans to send humans to the moon.
The Tiangong-1 space module, which crashed on Monday, was intended to serve as a stepping stone to a manned station, but its problems highlight the difficulties of exploring outer space.
Nonetheless, China has come a long way in its race to catch up with the United States and Russia, which have lost spacecraft, astronauts and cosmonauts over the decades.
China’s Tiangong-1 space lab finally returns to Earth, burning up over South Pacific
China’s astronauts have fared better and Beijing sees its military-run space programme as a marker of its rising global stature and growing technological might.
ere is a look at China’s space endeavour through the decades, and where it is headed:

Mao’s vow
Soon after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, Chairman Mao Zedong pronounced, “We too will make satellites”.
It took more than a decade, but in 1970 China’s first satellite lifted into space on the back of a Long March rocket.
How China’s astronauts train for space missions
Human space flight took decades longer, with the first successful mission coming in 2003.
As the launch of astronaut Yang Liwei into orbit approached, angst over the viability of the mission caused Beijing to cancel a nationwide live television broadcast at the last minute.
Despite the suspense, it went off smoothly, with Yang orbiting the Earth 14 times during his 21-hour flight aboard Shenzhou-5.
Since then China has sent men and women into space with increasing regularity.

Space station and ‘Jade Rabbit’
Following in the footsteps of the United States and Russia, China is striving to open a space station circling our planet.
The Tiangong-1 was shot into orbit in September 2011. In 2013, the second Chinese woman in space, Wang Yaping, gave a video class from inside the module beamed back to children across the world’s most populous country.
Tiangong-1’s watery grave in the remotest place on Earth
The lab was also used for medical experiments and, most importantly, tests intended to prepare for the building of a space station.
The lab was followed by the “Jade Rabbit” lunar rover in 2013 which looked at first like a dud when it turned dormant and stopped sending signals back to Earth.

The rover made a dramatic recovery, though, ultimately surveying the moon’s surface for 31 months, well beyond its expected lifespan.
In 2016, China launched its second station, the Tiangong-2 lab into orbit 393km (244 miles) above Earth, in what analysts said was likely to serve as a final building block before China launches a manned space station.
Astronauts who have visited the station have run experiments on growing rice and thale cress, and docking spacecraft.
China’s secret 1960s mission to send two dogs into space
Space dream
Under President Xi Jinping, plans for China’s “space dream”, as he calls it, have been put into overdrive.
The rising power is looking to finally catch up with the US and Russia after years of belatedly matching their space milestones.
The ambitions start with a space station of its own, slated to begin assembling pieces in space in 2020 with manned use to start about 2022 – China was deliberately left out of the International Space Station effort.

The country is also planning to build a base on the moon, the state-run Global Times said in early March, citing the Communist Party chief of the China Academy of Space Technology.
The outpost will initially be controlled by artificial intelligence robots until humans are sent to occasionally manage it, the official said.
But lunar work was dealt a setback in July last year when the Long March-5 Y2, a powerful heavy-lift rocket, failed to launch on a mission to send communication satellites into orbit.
Chinese moon missions will be delayed by rocket failure, report says
The failure forced the postponement of the launch of lunar probe Chang’e-5, originally expected to collect moon samples in the second half of last year.
Xinhua quoted a China Lunar Exploration Programme designer as saying last week that Chang’e 5 was now slated to land next year and bring back moon samples to Earth.
Another robot, Chang’e-4, was still due to land this year for the “first-ever soft landing and roving survey on the far side of the moon”, said Zuo Wei, deputy chief designer of the CLEP Ground Application System.
China’s astronauts and scientists have also talked up manned missions to Mars as it strives to become a “global space power”.


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Science

From Mao’s vow to Xi’s ‘space dream’, China takes another step on its Long March to the moon

A Long March-5 Y2 rocket takes off from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Centre in Wenchang, Hainan province, in July 2017. Soon after the launch, state media announced the mission had failed. Photo: Reuters

Long March 2 rocket carries Chinese space laboratory Tiangong-2 in an mission. Undated Handout.

China’s Chang’e-3 lander captured this image with Yutu (Jade Rabbit) rover. SCMP Pictures (UNDATED HANDOUT/ CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, CHINA NATIONAL SPACE ADMINISTRATION / THE SCIENCE AND APPLICATION CENTER FOR MOON AND DEEPSPACE EXPLORATION/EMILY LAKDAWALLA)

(120615) -- BEIJING, June 15, 2012 (Xinhua) -- This undated photo shows three taikonauts Jing Haipeng (C), Liu Wang (L) and Liu Yang attending a training in a capsule simulating the re-entry one of the Shenzhou-9 spaceship. They will be carried by the Shenzhou-9 spaceship for China's first manned space docking mission with the orbiting Tiangong-1 space lab module. (Xinhua/Qin Xian'an) (ly)

Chinese astronaut Wang Yaping teachers physics to students at from China's orbiting space module Tiangong-1.

News

China

People & Culture

Tiangong-1 came back to Earth with a bang on Monday, but it did little to diminish Beijing’s ambitions to become a global space power


Space

From Mao’s vow to Xi’s ‘space dream’, China takes another step on its Long March to the moon

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Tiangong-1 came back to Earth with a bang on Monday, but it did little to diminish Beijing’s ambitions to become a global space power

Tiangong-1 came back to Earth with a bang on Monday, but it did little to diminish Beijing’s ambitions to become a global space power