China revealed ambitious plans to land on the moon on Sunday, days before it attempts to become the third country to put an astronaut in space.
Government officials unveiled the scheme as the country counted down to a manned space flight that, if successful, would put it alongside the United States and Russia in one of the world’s most exclusive clubs.
”China will continue to develop its space exploration plans,” said Wang Shuquan, the deputy secretary of the commission for science, technology and industry for national defence.
”At a future time, China will carry out lunar landing and flight experiments.”
The target date for the moonwalk — something no country has managed, or bothered, to do for more than 30 years — is 2010. It would require considerable technological advances, but China’s space programme has already come a long way.
Thirty-three years ago China launched its first satellite, the Mao 1, on a propaganda mission to broadcast the Communist party anthem, The East Is Red, to the universe.
Now the country’s scientists are preparing for the biggest leap forward since then, and once again the main aim of the mission is to deliver a political message.
According to the state-controlled media, the first yuhangyuan (space traveller) will blast off by the end of this month.
Four monitoring vessels have been dispatched around the globe below the planned orbit, a sophisticated new mission control centre has been built near Beijing, and the spacecraft’s parts have been transported to the launch site in the Gobi desert. But as with previous Chinese launches, the details of the military-run mission are being kept secret.
If it is successful the Communist party will be able to proclaim a new stage in the country’s rapid economic development, increase its options for military exploitation of space and tacitly draw comparisons with the Columbia space shuttle disaster this year. But if it fails it will want to quietly head off a backlash of resentment about what will inevitably be seen as a vast waste of money.
Since 1992 China is estimated to have spent 19-billion yuan (£1,5-billion) on the mission, named Project 921. While this is less than a fifth of the amount spent by the US on its space programme, it has made a bigger dent in China’s resources, where many among the 1,2-billion-strong population still subsist on less than $1 a day.
With Russia cutting back on its once-vaunted space programme, China is on course to take second position in the space race, which also includes Japan, India and Europe.
The China national administration of spaceflight has trained 12 yuhangyuan — average weight 64kg, average height 170cm — of which up to three could be chosen for the first mission.
Although a modification of the proven Russian Soyuz spacecraft, the Shenzhou (Divine Vessel) IV will be launched on China’s three-stage Long March rocket, which uses fuel that could be deadly if it leaks into the capsule.
After the launch from the Jiuquan site in Gansu province, the Shenzhou is expected to make more than a dozen orbits of Earth, providing time for a possible spacewalk by the yuhangyuan, who by then will not be feeling the weight of their 10kg spacesuits.
The vessel will then split: an orbiting module will be left in space — providing a base for future operations or even the start of a Chinese space station — while the crew will board a re-entry capsule that will begin its descent over Namibia and parachute down on the plains of inner Mongolia, where temperatures can fall as low as -20C.
The US and Russia staged more than a dozen trial missions before sending people into space, but China aims to do so after just four test runs using dummy yuhangyuan.
Although the state-controlled media claim the Shenzhou is based on domestically developed technology, foreign aeronautical experts say it is largely modelled on US and Russian designs.
Critics say even if China succeeds in putting a yuhangyuan in space, it would merely bring the country up to the level achieved by Russia and America 40 years ago.
US defence officials, however, fear that it could mark the start of a space arms race. — Guardian Unlimited Â