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In February 2010, the Tianwen-1 mission, part of China's future manned Mars missions, is scheduled to arrive at Mars. China is aiming to win the new space race. Not only has it been the only country to land on the Moon in about 40 years, and the first to soft-land on its far side, it has also planted a flag on lunar soil and brought samples back to Earth.
With a Tianwen-1 mission that will be arriving at Mars on Tuesday, February 10, China is now approaching Mars. China is now approaching Mars with its Tianwen-1 mission, due to arrive on February 10. A successful insertion into orbit – the rover won’t land until May — will mark another crucial milestone for more than one reason.
Mars may be close to Earth, but it is a challenging target. About 20 of 49 missions have been successful up to December 2020. Not all of these endeavors were newbies' or early ones. A year ago, the European Space Agency's Schiaparelli Mars Explorer crashed on the surface. In 2016, The European Space Agency’s Schiaparelli Mars Explorer crashed on the surface. Also, ongoing technical issues have forced ESA and its Russian partner Roscosmos to postpone its next mission, ExoMars, until 2022.
On February 9, Hope, another UAE probe, will attempt the same insertion maneuver. On February 9, a UAE probe, Hope, will attempt the same insertion maneuver. It is not a direct competitor to the Chinese mission (the probe will just orbit the planet to study the martian weather), but (NASA’s Perseverance rover), set to arrive a week later, definitively is.
The success of Tianwen-1 is especially significant because it reasserts China’s space superiority over its neighbors.
The Indian Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), aka Mangalyaan, reached Mars in 2014 – the first to make it at its maiden mission. Something went wrong. Please try again later. Unlike India, it’s not the first time China has attempted a mission to Mars (the previous one, Yinghuo-1, in 2011, failed on launch). [Read: How much does it cost to buy, to own, and to run an electric vehicle?
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Space Age 2.0
Different countries have different development models when it comes to space, so the new space race is partly a competition for having the best approach. This reflects the specific character of the so-called Space Age 2.0, which, compared to the first one, looks more diverse, and where non-US actors, public and private, feature prominently especially Asian ones. China uses space in geopolitical and diplomatic competition, according to a congressional commission of the US government.
Cosmic warfare – allied with cyberwarfare – has come to be a fundamental domain of conflict where the United States is the dominant, but not the only, adversary. The development effort behind China’s space sector is still largely government-funded and military-led. According to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressional commission of the US government, China considers space as a “tool of geopolitical and diplomatic competition.” It is clear that, together with cyberspace, the cosmos has become a fundamental new war fighting domain, where the US is the main – but not the only – adversary. ??
China has already enacted five-year plans for its space activities, the latest of which ended in 2020 with more than 140 launches. More missions are planned: a new orbital space station, the retrieval of martian samples, and a Jupiter exploratory mission among them.
While the resources committed by the country remain largely an unknown (we only know what’s included in the five-year plans), US estimates for 2017 put this figure at US$11 billion (?8 billion), second only to the US itself – NASA’s budget for the same year was about US$20 billion (?15 billion).
India has taken quite a different approach, where civilian and commercial interests have long been predominant. Despite its modest ambitions and low budget, the Indian space program has made some remarkable gains, including commercializing affordable launch services for countries eager to send their own satellites into orbit.
One single rocket launched 104 satellites in India in 2017, none of which were foreign-owned or built (that record was just recently surpassed by Space X, with 143 satellites). In 2017, India made history with the largest number of satellites – 104 — ever launched by a rocket on a single missionto date, all but three foreign-owned and built (that record has only been beaten by SpaceX a few days ago, with 143 satellites). Even more impressive is the comparatively low cost of India’s Mars mission, US$74 million (?55 million) – about ten times less expensive than NASA’s Maven mission. India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, quipped that the whole mission cost less than the Hollywood movie, Gravity.
Indian officials released their 2019-20 government annual report, which shows that India has been investing more in the space sector. India’s government released its 2019-20 annual report, which shows a growing military involvement in the space sector. And another Moon and Venus missions are well on the Indian ISRO plans, in case the Chinese were not already motivated enough in making Tianwen-1 a resounding success. You may wish to read the original article.
This article by Steffi Paladini, Reader in Economics & Global Security, Birmingham City University is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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