CHINA revealed plans to investigate Jupiter and Uranus as part of a future mission.
Tianwen 4, the ambitious project, has been given the name. It will be done using two spacecraft.
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The spacecraft will be launched by China’s Long March 5 rocket. They will investigate Jupiter, Uranus and other planets in the 2030s.
Jupiter’s system will be investigated by the main spacecraft, which will eventually enter orbit around the moon Callisto.
China wants to concentrate its efforts on Callisto, in order to gain insight about the origins of the Jovian system.
It is also of interest to the country to study Jupiter’s erratic orbits.
In the meantime, the second, smaller, spacecraft will be headed towards Uranus.
Space domination
China’s latest announcement about its plans to explore Jupiter, Uranus and other planets is part of a whole mission called Tianwen that aims to study our solar system.
The nation sent the Tianwen 1 spacecraft and Zhurong rover, to Mars, a little more than two years ago.
China expressed its intentions to send a crewed space mission to the Moon in early 2015 and build its own space station called Tiangong.
The space station is being constructed in low-Earth orbit – between 210 and 280 miles above the surface.
China launched the first Tiangong module last year, and plans to add more before the end of the year.
It also hopes to bring back samples from Mars – a feat that both Nasa and the ESA hope to achieve.
Tensions escalating
As the space race continues, tensions between China and America have been growing.
According to the report, China plans to use the Moon to shield the Earth from asteroid impacts as part of its plan to protect it.AS.
This apparently is not going down well with Nasa officials who expressed concerns that China might have ulterior motives.
“We must be very worried that China is going to land on the Moon and say: now it is ours and you stay out,”Bill Nelson, director for Nasa, spoke earlier in the month.
China and Russia are collaborating to create a lunar base in China by 2035.
Tensions between Nasa and Russia’s Roscosmos have also escalated after Russia recently quit the International Space Station (ISS).
Yuri Borisov (the new Roscosmos head) said during a meeting: “The decision to leave the station after 2024 has been made.”