The Planetary Society Blog
By Emily Lakdawalla
China plans to go to Mars in 2009
May. 24, 2007 | 11:40 PDT | 18:40 UTC
There are news stories propagating around the Internet today about a Chinese announcement that they plan their first satellite to Mars in 2009. The satellite will be named Yinghuo-1; I believe that "Yinghuo" simply means "Mars." They would be piggybacking to Mars along with the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission, which is planned to return a sample from the surface of Phobos. It's a small spacecraft, weighing only 110 kilograms and having a bus 75 by 75 by 60 centimeters in size. The model in this image appears to be approximately half-size: Model of China's Yinghuo-1 spacecraftAn assistant demonstrates a model of a Mars exploration probe, displayed at the Shanghai Minhang District Museum on May 21, 2007. Credit: Shanghaidaily.com |
Here's the mission scenario, which I found in a Powerpoint presentation on "Martian Missions in Asia" by Stas Barabash from the Swedish Institute of Space Physics:- Launch with Phobos-Grunt in October 2009
- Separate from Phobos-Grunt immediately after Mars orbit insertion, August or September 2010
- Highly elliptical, equatorial orbit (800 by 80,000 kilometers, five-degree inclination, and three-day period)
- No capability to transfer its orbit
- Total mission timeline of two years (including cruise!), so about one year spent in Mars orbit
- Direct-to-Earth communications via an approximately 1-meter, S-band dish, transmitting at 10 W and 2500 bps
- Two solar arrays, each with three sections, totaling 5.6 meters long, providing 90 W power (averaged), 180 W (peak)
The presentation also states that an agreement between China and Russia was signed in March, and that if Yinghuo-1 isn't launched in 2009, they have plans to launch in 2011. According to an article from the Xinhua news agency, there remain three technological hurdles to the construction of the spacecraft: "remote observation and control, automatic control, and heat control." All of these are challenges facing every deep-space mission; China no doubt sees this mission as being important to help stimulate its development of domestic deep-space capabilities. Just as clearly, China's success -- or failure -- with the Chang'e 1 mission to the Moon will figure very importantly into whether Yinghuo-1 will launch as currently scheduled.
First Russia and the U.S. -- then Japan and Europe -- it now looks like China is ready to ride to Mars!
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