It’s going to be exciting because things have gone wrong a few times with the Long March 5, and this 5b, a heavy-duty variant, has never been launched. It was not until December that the launch of the rocket went smoothly for the first time. But another type from the Long Mars rocket family ran into problems in March, so China is very concerned that things are going well now, says Marc Klein Wolt of the Radboud University Radio Lab. That lab delivered in 2018 a scientific antenna for a Chinese satellite behind the moon. “Failures are not done in China. An American company like SpaceX says it always learns from its failures, but losing face is not pleasant in Chinese culture.”
They are also looking forward to the launch on Tuesday at Nijmegen University, because this rocket will become important in the coming years: the new Chinese space station and some Mars and lunar landers will have to go into space with it. The Radio Lab hopes to hook up with one or more scientific instruments. Klein Wolt: “We are now discussing this with the Chinese. Those missions go with the same missile, so if it has a problem, all those plans will be postponed again.”
On April 24, it was the annual ‘space day’ in China. A special one, because it has been half a century since the country launched its very first satellite into space, the Dongfanghong-1 (‘The East is Red’). Normally there are all kinds of exhibitions on space day, but because of corona, only the name of the new Marslander was now announced: Tianwen-1 (‘Questions to Heaven’).
China has had some great successes with unmanned scouts in recent years. Last year, Chang’e 4 was the first to land on the far side of the moon. Chang’e 5 is to bring a scoop of lunar soil to Earth this year.
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