This ambitious goal is part of a plan to establish a base on this red planet, with increasingly fierce competition in American space.

China plans to send its first manned mission to Mars in 2033, and regularly follow-up flights. This is a long-term plan to establish a permanently inhabited base on this red planet and extract its resources.

This ambitious plan will be disclosed in detail for the first time after China. The plan will intensify the competition with the United States and send humans to Mars. A robotic rover landed on Mars In mid-May, it began its first mission to Earth.

Wang Xiaojun, head of China’s major rocket manufacturer, recently stated at the Space Exploration Conference held in Russia through a video link that manned Mars launches are planned in 2033, 2035, 2037, 2041 and beyond.

The official China Aerospace News on Wednesday quoted Wang, the president of the China Academy of Launch Vehicles, as saying that before the manned mission begins, China will send robots to Mars to study the possible location of the base and establish a system for extracting resources there. technology.

In order for humans to live on Mars, the crew must be able to use the earth’s resources, such as extracting any water under its surface, generating oxygen on site, and generating electricity.

China must also develop technology to send astronauts back to Earth.

It is expected that by the end of 2030, an unmanned shuttle mission to obtain soil samples from the earth will be carried out.

NASA has been developing technology to allow crew members to board and return to Mars sometime in the 2030s.

Wang said that China’s Mars plan envisages a major development of a fleet of spacecraft and their resources that shuttle between the Earth and Mars.

Wang said that in order to shorten the travel time, in addition to traditional chemical propellants, the spacecraft must also use the energy released by nuclear reactions in the form of heat and electricity.

He said that China will have to complete a round trip with a total flight time of “a few hundred days.”

China also plans to establish a base on the south pole of the moon and deploy robots to explore asteroids and Jupiter around 2030.

Last week, China sent three astronauts to an unfinished space station in its first manned mission since 2016, expanding its growing near-Earth presence and challenging the U.S. leadership in orbital space.