China maps out plans to put astronauts on Moon and on Mars
JIUQUAN SATELLITE LAUNCH CENTER, INNER MONGOLIA >> Thirty years ago, the Chinese government initiated a secret plan for its space program, including a key goal of building a space station by 2020.
At the time, the country was 11 years from sending its first astronaut into space, and its space efforts were going through a rough patch: Chinese rockets failed in 1991, 1992, 1995 and twice in 1996. The worst failure, in 1996, was a rocket that tipped to the side, flew in the wrong direction and exploded 22 seconds after launch, showering a Chinese village with falling wreckage and flaming fuel that killed or injured at least 63 people.
Although grand spaceflight plans of some nations have ended up many years behind schedule, China completed the assembly in orbit of its Tiangong space station in late October, only 22 months later than planned. And on Nov. 29, the Shenzhou 15 mission blasted off from China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center deep in the Gobi Desert and took three astronauts to the space station to begin permanent occupancy of the outpost.
These human spaceflight achievements, combined with recent space probes to the moon and Mars, add to the evidence that China is running a steady space marathon rather than competing in a head-to-head space race with the United States. That China’s space program is making good time toward its long-term goals was reinforced during a rare visit for foreign media to the country’s heavily guarded desert rocket base for the Nov. 29 launch — including lengthy interviews with senior Chinese space officials for The New York Times.
The Pentagon predicted in August that China would surpass American capabilities in space as soon as 2045.
“I think it’s entirely possible they could catch up and surpass us, absolutely,” said Lt. Gen. Nina
Armagno, staff director of the U.S. Space Force, at a conference in Sydney the day before the launch of Shenzhou 15. “The progress they’ve made has been stunning — stunningly fast.”
China’s program left the starting line in 1986, decades after the height of the U.S.-Soviet space race. That was when Deng Xiaoping, China’s paramount leader then, approved Project 863, a science-and-technology development program that included plans for a crewed spacecraft.
The program began to pick up speed in 1992 with Project 921. “The goal set back then was to complete the construction of the Chinese space station around 2020,” said Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China’s crewed space program.
Despite initial embarrassment as rockets kept blowing up instead of reaching space, China picked up the pace in the years that followed. American companies, looking for an inexpensive way to put satellites into space, helped China fix its rocket quality problems. In 2003, Boeing ended up agreeing to pay $32 million in fines for violations of American arms exports controls by a company that it had acquired, Hughes Space and Communications.
Having already made big strides in space in recent years, a half-dozen Chinese space officials outlined their plans for the coming years in interviews at the launch center, which sits in a vast, frozen expanse of gray gravel in northwestern China, almost four hours’ drive from the nearest large town.
The Tiangong space station weighs nearly 100 tons. That is barely more than the American Skylab that launched in 1973, and it is less than the Mir space station that the Soviet Union began assembling in space in 1986.
Tiangong is being portrayed by state media to the Chinese public as a three-bedroom home in the sky. Still, it is a lot smaller than the International Space Station, which is about 450 tons and has sleeping space for seven.