The Chinese Space Agency showed at the exhibition a lander on which two taikonauts should get to the Moon. This is planned to happen in 2030. In parallel, the Celestial Empire is developing a rocket to fly to our moon.
Chinese Lunar Lander
A model of the Chinese lander, which is supposed to deliver Taikonauts to the Moon, was presented in Beijing on February 24. It happened at an exhibition dedicated to three decades of manned space flights of the Celestial Empire.
It is planned that China will make a manned flight to the Moon no earlier than 2030. The presented model allows us to consider the engines, the docking mechanism, the lunar rover, the hatch for the crew and other details.
The general concept of the Chinese lunar module would be very different from that used during the Apollo program. Then the device used the same engine for both landing and takeoff.
Instead, the Chinese lander will have a landing stage with a separate engine and tanks, which will work most of the way to the Moon. At some point, it undocks and makes a hard landing at a safe distance. And the spacecraft with two taikonauts will complete it on the same engine, which will then return them to orbit. Its crew will be waiting for the service module.
Chinese Lunar rocket
In parallel, many Chinese space institutions continue to work on a lunar rocket. Previously, its main variant was called the giant expendable carrier Long March 9. However, last year China announced that it was abandoning these plans.
At the current exhibition, the model of the lunar rocket looks quite different. It is called Long March and is reusable and modular. It will have two versions. The conventional one is designed to launch cargo into near-Earth orbit. And a “three-core”, that is, composed of three single rockets, will deliver the Taikonauts to the Moon.
The new rocket should be much more technologically advanced and multifunctional than the previous version. But its development will take time, so the first steps of the Chinese to the Moon will have to be postponed until the early 2030s.
Lunar Base
The Chinese lunar program has another, most important component. This is a base on our natural moon. The Celestial Empire announced plans for its creation back in 2021. It was planned that the station would be built and would start working offline, and then taikonauts would arrive at it and begin functioning as a full-fledged settlement.
At the same time, Russia was called China’s main partner in the construction of the lunar base. But with the beginning of a large-scale invasion in Ukraine, Chinese engineers are trying not to remember about it once again.
According to spacenews.com
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