China's Moon Ambitions: Rover in 2013, Bring Home Samples in 2017, and a Manned Base to Follow
Chang'e-3 Chinese Lunar Rover Image of a slide presented at the IEEE's International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Shanghai. IEEE Spectrum A Chinese official kicked off an international robotics conference in Shanghai this week by confirming China plans to send a robot to the moon within two years and aims to bring a lunar sample home by 2017. The ultimate goal is a manned landing and lunar outpost, which China will start building after the sample-return mission, according to Ziyuan Ouyang, the chief scientist ofChina's lunar exploration program. Dates are still pretty tenuous, but last month another Chinese space official said the country would send a man to the moon by 2025. So far, things have been going just as planned for China's nascent moon program, which launched a second orbiter last October. The Chang'e 2 mission saw several improvements over Chang'e 1, including a more powerful rocket that delivered...