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China Mars

China Completes Crucial Landing Test For First Mars Mission in 2020 (reuters.com) 55

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
China on Thursday successfully completed a crucial landing test in northern Hebei province ahead of a historic unmanned exploration mission to Mars next year. From a report: China is on track to launch its Mars mission, Zhang Kejian, head of the China National Space Administration, said on Thursday, speaking to foreign diplomats and the media before the test. The Mars lander underwent a hovering-and-obstacle avoidance test at a sprawling site in Huailai, northwest of Beijing. The site was littered with small mounds of rocks to simulate the uneven terrain on Mars which the lander would have to navigate on its descent to the planet's surface. "In 2016, China officially began the Mars exploration mission work, and currently all of the different development work is progressing smoothly," Zhang said.
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China Completes Crucial Landing Test For First Mars Mission in 2020 More

China Completes Crucial Landing Test For First Mars Mission in 2020

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  • Without privatization and by harnessing another states education system.

    • Without privatization

      40.6 million [marketwatch.com], and growing at 4 million per year [chinacheckup.com] is not "without". Some of the best [wikipedia.org] ones [wikipedia.org] are owned by foreign private investors (who just won't share their profits with you the American commoners anyway.)

      and by harnessing another states education system

      Like harnessing China's education system by the US? (And thanks to brainless American nationalists like you, China's brain drain problem may be ending [insidehighered.com]. You have accomplished something the Chinese government has been dreaming to do.)

      In any case, it is better than harnessing other country's patents and invent [jstor.org]

  • I am expecting a small crater decorated with confetti as the result of this first mission

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Nah - just all maps will suddenly claim Mars has been historically a part of China.
    • From a numbers POV, China will fail. However, China successfully landed the moon. In addition, they have Russia helping them with this and probably have a LOT of stolen NASA data. My guess is that they will be successful.

  • In the year 2013, China put a robot rover on the moon. It had a hardware failure on the second day and was unable to move.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jwhyche ( 6192 )

      So? Twenty years ago the US couldn't keeps it's measurements systems the same and Mars had a new multi million dollar moon. A few years back the EU created a new crater on Mars. The Russians have a number of them flying the flag of the Russian Federation, craters and moons around or on Mars.

      You learn by failure too. I really hope the first human on Mars is a American, but I'll be just as happy if the first one is Chinese, Russian, African, Arab, or carrying a EU flag. I honestly don't care about

      • Another apologist for Panda Xi Jinping. What a surprise.

        I notice, wumao, you're so unfamiliar with our race/nationality narrative that you put "African" and "Arab" up there without realizing that's blatantly racially offensive and moreover they aren't nationalities like the others. It's so easy to spot you wumao once you know what to look for.

        I'm sorry your life is like this, resorting to posting propaganda online because you don't see any other way to make money. I hope it gets better.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jwhyche ( 6192 )

          Well first of all, nobody needs to be an apologist for Panda Xi Jinping. It was a remarkable accomplishment for what they did. I would ask what have accomplished in the same league?

          As a bonus general categorizes like African or Arab are no more offensive than calling someone Asian or American. But just judging from the content of your post here, seems you have something against Chinese people. I think the racist one in this conversion would be you.

      • Twenty years ago the US couldn't keeps it's measurements systems the same and Mars had a new multi million dollar moon.

        And this is why we shouldn't use the metric system.

        Look at the countries that use the metric system. They keep crashing into Mars. Yet the US doesn't have this problem.

        China is using the metric system, so they are doomed to failure as well.

        (And, yes, the above is a joke.)

        • Rest assured: the successfull Mars landings, all used the metric system.

          How else would you funky fly so far and land successfully? Do you really think programmers write double logic? Converting from astronomic aka metric into imperial, running the program in imperial and converting back to check how it looks outside? That does not make sense at all. A Light second is a light second, a parsec is a parsec, there is no logical way to convert that into an imperial unit.

          (the above puts joking aside :-P )

          • Rest assured: the successfull Mars landings, all used the metric system.

            Well, the unsuccessful ones also used the metric system. And Mars Climate Orbiter failed because a conversion between metric and imperial units. So if they had to do that conversion and just stuck with imperial, everything would have been fine!

            That's a joke. Seriously, NASA had specced it to use metric units and the provider screwed up and provided it in imperial. So, yes, NASA probes use metric.

            I keep muttering that I'm going to stick this conspiracy theory up on reddit and see if I can get any follow

  • What makes this mission qualify as "historic"? They're not doing something that hasn't been done before. Is it enough that an even takes place "in history"? Then the cup of coffee I'm having right now is a historic milestone in the usage of a French press...

    • What makes this mission qualify as "historic"? They're not doing something that hasn't been done before.

      It will be historic for them. Everything isn't about you.

      • yeah. no.
        Nothing historic about this. Calling it so, is like calling the flight with 2 women space walkers historic. Even they said it was BS.
        • So your first black President wasn't historic? The first female President won't be either I guess. America giving women the vote isn't even historic according to your criteria. All done before by someone else first.
      • Another defense of Pandi Xi Jinping. Isn't it amazing how threads like this just bring you people out in droves? FREE HONG KONG. FUCK XI.

        • Another defense of Pandi Xi Jinping.

          FFS, try not to be an idiot.

          Isn't it amazing how threads like this just bring you people out in droves?

          People who know what words mean?

          • Posting in defense of Papa Poohbear doesn't mean you're a wumao. But the rest of us fail to see the difference between the two. Honestly you should be getting paid to make such posts, doing it for free is being a sucker.

            • Posting in defense of Papa Poohbear doesn't mean you're a wumao.

              I'm posting in defense of the English language. Wing-Xi the Pu can go fuck himself sideways. When you learn to tell the difference, you'll be qualified to post again.

              Honestly you should be getting paid to make such posts, doing it for free is being a sucker.

              What would it cost to pay you to go away?

              • When people can't tell the difference between you and a wumao because you both come out punching in defense of Daddy Xi, maybe it's a sign to take some time off and figure out where you went wrong.

                • What I did wrong was assume that people around here wouldn't read things I didn't say into what I did. What you did wrong was making unsupported assumptions. But you're not even taking your inability to understand the written word into account, because you think you speak English. You don't.

                  • Well, I have reading level on /. set to 2. So I only see posts like yours and don't feel the social warriors wrath to answer to idiots like you do. Honestly: there are enough idiots on level 2. Don't waste your Chi on ACs.

    • Is historical in the same way that a re-enactment of a civil wqr battle is historical. China is re-enacting historical events from the 1970s United States.

      • As well as Soviets. They technically had first landing, though mission failed. BUT, it did give a partial Pix.

        • When I crashed my RC plane into the side of.a building, I got back video of the side of the building as the camera hit it, then a few seconds of video of blades of grass after the pieces fell into the grass.

          In its few seconds of operation before it died completely, the Soviet Mars craft sent half a frame of gray. No image ee can see anything in. Did it land or did it crash? We'll never know for sure. It LOOKS worse than the crash that broke my plane into four pieces.

  • History says K.I.S.S. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Thursday November 14, 2019 @12:31PM (#59413954) Journal

    Suggestion: keep your first lander very simple and focus on landing above all else. The Soviet Union and Europe failed in part because they spent resources and weight on fancy experiments instead of landing.

    Mars is hard to land on because its atmosphere is too thin to slow a lander well and too thick to rely purely on Apollo-like retro rockets. It's too half-ass.

    • Bingo.
      Most likely, this one is going to fail, but, as somebody else said, you learn a lot from failure (esp. humility).
      Right now, they are trying hard to copy America's approach, but that has taken a LOT OF WORK to accomplish that.

      Still, I hope they succeed.

    • I really wonder when the "professionals" grasp what the Mars atmosphere problem is, when it is bluntly in eye sight.
      The atmosphere is very thin, but local weather might make it twice as thick as "average". Air pressure shifting from about one hektopascal to two hektopascal makes shifts in the 100% range. Probably even more.
      No idea why they don't grasp that and can not adjust landing gear accordingly.

  • The more nations that can land on Mars, the better. So far, only America and soviets have done so. And soviets was first, but only with 14.5 seconds of transmissions.

  • 2021 at earliest (Score:3)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Thursday November 14, 2019 @02:29PM (#59414446)
    The relative positions of Earth and Mars in their orbits means that the amount of energy needed to launch a spacecraft to Mars varies over time. It reaches a minimum about every 2.14 years [wikipedia.org]. The last window was early 2018, which is when InSight was launched. The next window would be late 2020. And since it takes about 6 months to travel to Mars, this would put the landing date in early 2021. (I suppose you could argue that the mission starts at launch. But by that argument, you could also argue that the mission starts when you begin designing the spacecraft.)
  • I sure hope I won't have to hire you bunch in any development position. Just because something has been done before by someone else, so it is not worth doing? Who doesn't play catch up before they make advances of their own? The US Space program grew explosively in the early years only because there was fierce competition from the Russians. Once that was "won", public support has waned and advances have slowed. People who are science and technology minded should be happy there is viable competition growing

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