China Wants to Send Astronauts to Mars Immediately, Will It Beat NASA's Orbital Mission to the Red Planet?

China's Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation has declared intentions to deploy people to Mars.

"Sending astronauts there will give man better opportunities to look for traces of life on Mars," Pang Zhihao, a space technology researcher in Beijing, told China Daily. "There are theories that Mars was very similar to Earth in terms of environment billions of years ago."

It's "the first time China's space industry has openly announced a strategy for crewed expeditions to Mars," according to the article. China has scheduled 2033, 2035, 2037, 2041, and 2043 for such trips and stated that it will research technologies to bring people back to Earth.

(Photo : NASA via Getty Images)
JEZERO CRATER, MARS - FEBRUARY 18: In this handout image provided by NASA, still image is part of a video taken by several cameras aboard the descent stage as NASA’s Perseverance rover as it touched down in the area known as Jezero crater on February 18, 2021 on the planet Mars.

Mars Attack: China vs. Mars

The first stop will be a human Moon trip. According to Space.com, China unveiled the next-generation spaceship it wants to use to carry people to the Moon and return in the late 2020s.

Afterward, crews (per Reuters) would have to be able to make use of the planet's resources. These include retrieving any lost water under the surface (per Republic World), manufacturing oxygen on-site, and generating energy.

China's Mars ambitions have been revealed following a series of successful space missions. China has started building its own space station and flew the first astronauts up there earlier this month. It was the first crewed flight to space for China since 2016.

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CNBC said President Xi Jinping of China talked to the astronauts earlier this year, congratulating them and emphasizing how the country's space objectives are backed from the top. China aims to be the leader in space due to a larger technological competition with the United States.

A 500-Day Journey

A study obtained by SpaceNews, NASA's Mars orbital mission "could be carried out no earlier than the 2037 orbital window without accepting significant technological development, timetable delay, cost overrun, and budget deficit risks.

However, the project will be faced with difficulties. According to Pang, the journey might take "more than 500 days" and not be completed before 2050. Pang said other dangers include "the loss of bone mineral density, space radiation, and mental health."

In addition to typical chemical propellants, Pang said their spacecraft would have to access energy emitted by nuclear processes in the form of heat and power to reduce journey time.

China is currently sending robots to Mars to study the surface and help find a suitable location for a colony. The next step would be to launch astronauts to Mars to construct a base station. Then there's China's desire for massive Earth-to-Mars freight trips.