China is on track to reach Mars in 2020

China is one step closer to meeting its ambitious plans to travel to the moon, and then to Mars, after the successful launch of its biggest rocket yet.

The heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket will one day carry payloads to the country's permanent space station, and a rover to Mars in 2020.

On Thursday night it successfully blasted off in front of thousands of spectators, carrying the Shijian-17 ion propulsion technology experiment satellite towards a geosynchronous orbit.

The rocket blasted off on Thursday night from the Wenchang launch centre, in Hainan province.

China launched the Tiangong 2 precursor facility in September and sent up two astronauts in mid-October to live aboard it for 30 days.

The permanent space station's 18 tonne (20 US ton) core module will be launched in 2018, and the completed 54 tonne (60 US) ton station is set to come into full service in 2022 and last at least a decade.

The Tiangong, or 'Heavenly Palace,' stations are considered stepping stones to an unmanned mission to Mars by the end of the decade.

The Long March 5's next mission will be lofting the robotic Chang'e 5 probe to the moon next year to land a rover before returning to Earth with samples.

The 187-foot (57-metre) two-stage rocket is China's largest, capable of carrying 25 tons of payload into low-earth orbit and 14 tons to the more distant geostationary transfer orbit, in which a satellite orbits constantly above a fixed position on the earth's surface.

That is more than twice the carrying capacity of China's most capable current rocket, the Long March 7.

It is can carry slightly less than the most powerful rocket in service, the United Launch Alliance's Delta IV.

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, planned for launching next year, is designed to carry a payload into low-earth orbit of more than twice that size.

Not to be outdone, China is working on an even bigger rocket capable of lifting 90 tonnes (100 tons) of payload into low-earth orbit, Tian Yulong, the program's chief engineer, was quoted as saying at a news conference following Thursday's launch.

That would put it in the range of the now-retired Saturn 5 rockets the US used in the Apollo lunar missions.

Unlike earlier rockets that used highly toxic fuels, the Long March 5 burns a more environmentally friendly and less expensive kerosene-liquid oxygen-liquid hydrogen mix.

It has a take-off weight of 789 tonnes (870 tons) and a thrust of 962 tonnes (1,060 tons).

Wenchang, on the southern island of Hainan, is China's fourth and newest launch site.

Although Thursday's mission was mainly designed to test the reliability of the Long March 5, it also carried a satellite for testing technology used to observe space debris, new electric sources and electric propulsion, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Its upper section, the Yuanzheng 2, is designed to better launch multiple satellites and send them directly into orbit, Xinhua said.

In a joint congratulatory letter following the launch, the ruling Communist Party's Central Committee, the cabinet and the commission overseeing the military praised the new rocket as 'the pinnacle of innovation in carrier rocket science and technology.'

'Its successful launch... marks a milestone in China's transition from a major player in space to a major power in space,' the letter said, according to state media.

China has its sights set firmly on Mars and is aiming to launch its own rover to the red planet by 2020.

Images released in August provided the first glimpse of what this rover might look like when it launches at the end of the decade.

A Long March-5 carrier rocket will be dispatched from the Wenchang space launch centre in the southern island province of Hainan, carrying the rover.

The lander will separate from the orbiter at the end of a journey of around seven months and touch down near the Martian equator, where the rover will explore the surface.

The 441 pound (200 kg) rover has six wheels and four solar panels, and will operate for around 92 days.

It will carry 13 sets of equipment including a remote sensing camera and a ground-penetrating radar.

Source: Daily Mail

(Dhaka times/4 November/SUL)