I don't think that will be likely, to be honest...
Quote from: beidou on 06/25/2014 04:54 pmI don't think that will be likely, to be honest...Why not? That's six years away, by that time all being well we will have seen the second lunar sample return mission as well as another lunar rover, and the LM-5 in service.
Quote from: Dalhousie on 06/26/2014 11:08 amQuote from: beidou on 06/25/2014 04:54 pmI don't think that will be likely, to be honest...Why not? That's six years away, by that time all being well we will have seen the second lunar sample return mission as well as another lunar rover, and the LM-5 in service.How much of the Lunar hardware being used/developed also be used for this?
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1539568/next-stop-mars-china-aims-send-rover-red-planet-within-six-years"China has ambitious plans to touch down on Mars by 2020, likely with a rover, and to collect its own samples from the red planet 10 years after that, a top aerospace scientist has revealed."
In 2000, Ouyang said "in 2020 they will establish a moon village or even a town." How's that coming along? http://bit.ly/1mvUhhA
Quote from: Dalhousie on 06/25/2014 09:01 amhttp://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1539568/next-stop-mars-china-aims-send-rover-red-planet-within-six-years"China has ambitious plans to touch down on Mars by 2020, likely with a rover, and to collect its own samples from the red planet 10 years after that, a top aerospace scientist has revealed."What "top aerospace scientists" want to do, and what the government wants to pay for are quite different, but frequently conflated in press reports.2020 for a modest lander or rover doesn't seem out of the question, but like you I'd expect them to at least fly an orbiter and perhaps an EDL demonstrator first. Sample return would be a much bigger investment than China has put into planetary science so far.
I don't know how many of you were following the Chinese space program in the early 2000s, but when they approved the Chang'e program, they publicly announced that they did.only when I will see such an announcement (from official sources, not from one or two scientists) I will believe that they are going to Mars.
found on a French forum, a reportage on the Mars lander + rover on show at the Zhuhai airshownote the CG rendering starting at 1:47. I wonder why would the Chinese go for such a complex lander to land a MER-sized rover, while they could use airbags. Is the lander itself instrumented somehow? would they use it as a EDL demonstrator for a bigger lander?
Looking at the video it would appear that the lander separates from the orbiter/fly-by probe during the approach to Mars like the Soviet-era Mars 2/3/6/7, while the Viking landers did their descents from Mars orbit. Of course, the US rovers also completed direct descents to Mars. This could cause problems if there is only a limited ability to change the landing site in the case of a dust storm being in progress.