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China to Launch Moon Mission in 2005

Posted on: Monday, 3 March 2003, 06:00 CST

BEIJING (AFP) -- China could launch an unmanned mission to the moon within the next two-and-a-half years if the central government gives the green light now, state media said Monday.

"We will be able to embark on a maiden unmanned mission within two-and-a-half years if the government endorses the scheme now," Ouyang Ziyuan, chief scientist of the lunar exploration program, told the China Daily.

The ambitious plans were announced just months before China is expected to send a man into space, becoming the third country to do so after the former Soviet Union and the United States.

China's lunar scheme has been named the "Chang'e Program," a reference to an ancient legend about a fairy who flies to the moon.

Ouyang said lunar exploration was a necessity, since the moon "probably holds the key to humanity's future subsistence and development."

A manned mission to the moon is not currently a goal for China, although ultimately the world's most populous nation will send people on lunar expeditions, according to Ouyang.

Sun Jiadong, a senior Beijing-based space expert, told the paper the "tried and tested" Long March III-A rocket will play a key role in the early phases of the lunar program.

The rocket will blast off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwestern Sichuan province carrying a lunar explorer satellite based on the Dongfanghong III ("The East is Red") communications satellite.

The satellite will orbit the moon and develop a three-dimensional map of its surface, according to the paper.

In the second step, a rocket will blast off towards a lunar landing, while in the third step, China will launch a space shuttle capable of collecting samples on the moon and returning to Earth, it said.

Luan Enjie, director of the State Space Administration, told reporters over the weekend that China will start researching practical technologies that will make moon exploration possible as early as this year.

Huang Chunping, general director of the rocket system of China's space program, last month said he believed China was fully capable of sending astronauts to the moon.

State media said last year that China wanted to establish a moon base, while space exhibitions have suggested Beijing had ambitions to eventually explore Mars as well.

China has so far launched four unmanned spaceflights, the last of which, Shenzhou IV, successfully returned to earth on January 5 after a 162-hour mission. It was seen as the final dress rehearsal before a manned spaceflight.

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