Everything you need to know about China’s space race

It has landed craft on Mars and on the dark side of the Moon, and it is building a space station. What are China’s ambitions in space?

Tianhe rocket
The Tianhe module blasts off in April 2021
(Image credit: VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

Space exploration has been a long-term goal for the People’s Republic ever since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 in 1957. Chairman Mao lamented at the time that “we cannot even put a potato into space”, and the Communist Party leadership vowed to produce “two bombs and a satellite”: an atomic bomb, a hydrogen bomb, and a satellite.

China did not launch its first satellite until 1970, but since the 1980s it has been catching up fast with the major spacefaring nations. Its space programme really announced itself to the world in 2003, when Yang Liwei became its first taikonaut (as China calls its astronauts), orbiting the Earth 14 times during a 21-hour flight aboard the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft. China thus became the third nation to independently send astronauts into space.

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