Timeline: major achievements in Chinese space exploration

BEIJING (Reuters) – China plans to launch an unmanned probe to the moon earlier this week to bring back moon rocks in a nation’s first attempt to recover samples from Earth’s natural satellite since the 1970s.

If successful, the mission will make China only the third country to have recovered lunar samples, after the United States and the Soviet Union decades ago.

Here is a timeline of key moments in Chinese space exploration:

July 19, 1964: China takes its first official step into space, launching and recovering an experimental biological rocket carrying white mice.

April 24, 1970: China’s first artificial satellite, Dong Fang Hong 1, was launched at the Jiuquan Launch Center in the northwestern province of Gansu. This made China the fifth country to send satellites into orbit after the Soviet Union, the United States, France and Japan.

November 26, 1975: China’s first recoverable satellite was successfully launched and returned to Earth.

November 20, 1999: China successfully launched its first unmanned spacecraft, the Shenzhou 1, at the Jiuquan Launch Center. The country launched three more unmanned spaceships in 2001 and 2002 in preparation for a manned spacecraft.

October 15, 2003: China became the third country after the United States and Russia to send a man into space with their own rocket. Astronaut Yang Liwei spent approximately 21 hours in space aboard the Shenzhou-5 spacecraft.

October 12, 2005: The country sent two men on a five-day flight on its Shenzhou VI ship.

November 5, 2007: China’s first lunar orbiter, Chang’e 1, entered the moon’s orbit 12 days after take-off.

September 25, 2008: The third manned Chinese rocket, Shenzhou VII, was launched into space where an astronaut exited the spacecraft and walked into space.

October 1, 2010: China’s second lunar exploration probe took off from a remote corner of the southwestern province of Sichuan.

September 29, 2011: Tiangong-1, or “Heavenly Palace 1”, China’s first space laboratory, was launched to perform docking and orbit experiments.

November 3, 2011: China successfully conducted its first docking exercise between two unmanned spacecraft, the Shenzhou 8 spacecraft and the Tiangong 1 module, a key test to ensure a long-term manned presence in space.

December 14, 2013: China landed an unmanned spacecraft on the moon in the first of these “soft landings” since 1976, joining the United States and the former Soviet Union to accomplish the feat.

September 15, 2016 ： China launched its second experimental space laboratory, Tiangong 2, part of a larger plan to have a manned permanent space station in service around 2022.

January 3, 2019: The Chang’e-4 lunar probe, launched in December, successfully landed on the far side of the moon. Previous spacecraft saw the opposite side, but no one landed there.

June 23, 2020: China has successfully put its latest Beidou satellite into orbit, completing a navigation network in progress and setting the stage to challenge the US-owned Global Positioning System (GPS).

July 23, 2020: China launched an unmanned probe to Mars on its first independent mission to another planet.