It was just five years ago when Mike Griffin who was the former NASA administrator told the House Science, Space, and Technology committee that it is possible for China to construct a manned lunar mission, and now China's Long March-5 rocket has flown making a remarkable milestone in country's space program.

Like Us on Facebook

"By launching and rendezvousing four of those in low Earth orbit, it would be possible for the Chinese to construct a manned lunar mission with no more than that rocket and no more than Apollo technology," Griffin said as quoted by Arstechnica. 

The remarkable launching of Long March-5 rocket last week proved China's capability to design a large rocket around its new YF-100 engines and was noted to have the capacity to start marching the Taikonaut lunar mission.

This launching marks China's greatest achivement in space advancement. Long March-5 general mission is to build a space station on Earth's orbit that will allow to do more extensive un-crewed lunar and planetary explorations in the next five years. 

It took 30 years for the Chinese space workers to completely arrive on this great milestone of Long March-5 rocket launching.  

The Long March-5 is the most complex and largest among the march family. Its large thrust engine that needs lots of amount of nitrogen was one of the biggest challenges on the making, yet this Long March-5 is also the new generation of China's rocket that will be the successor of the Long March rocket series. 

Another new characteristic of the Long March-5 is being environmental friendly as it uses kerosene-liquid-oxygen-liquid hydrogen mix that is cheaper compared with the previous March series rocket that uses toxic, expensive fuel.

China's Current Focus

China is currently focused on space station, but if it chooses to go into deep space, the Long March-5 rocket is powerful enough to stage an Earth orbit for landings on the Moon and to push a payload into Lunar transfer orbit (LTO).

China is setting its sights also on the making of the Long March-9, a super-heavy lift rocket in the class of the Apollo program's Saturn V rocket. This powerful rocket is projected to have a payload capacity of at least 130 metric tons into the Lunar Earth Orbit and at least 50 metric tons payload-to-Lunar Transfer Orbit.

What China can do?

The decision to go as early as possible to the Lunar Manned Mission all depends on the government of China. It is continually making more innovations in reaching the space, which create lots of challenges to the US with consideration of the current results of the 2016 Election.

This successful launching of Long March-5 rocket has put China in the front row among third world countries and being in the same row with the US and Russia in terms of space- and rocket-carrying capacity.

One of the challenging questions to answer now is "Will China land humans on the Moon before America returns?" 

For all we know that since 1972, no humans have set their foot on the moon's surface and to include also the China's Chang'e-3 unmanned lunar lander of 2013. There is this lunar radar project of China that shows manifestations of being one of the major players in the new race to the moon together with the US and Russia. This radar could generate 1.4 gigabytes of data per seconds that would help with wide range of scientific research on space. 

Tagschina, Long March-5 Rocket, lunar mission, Space