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Last Updated: Oct 24th, 2006 - 17:24:11 |
BEIJING (AFP) - China and Russia are planning a joint mission to Mars that will bring back samples to earth and land on one of the red planet's tiny moons, state media have quoted a Chinese scientist as saying.
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| View of the International Space Station (ISS) taken from the shuttle Discovery in July. The Atlantis shuttle is scheduled to launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida 27 August on the first ISS assembly mission in nearly four years, as the 2003 Columbia disaster forced NASA to focus on improving safety in the past two shuttle flights(AFP/NASA/File) |
Ye Peijian, of the Chinese Research Institute of Space Technology, made the announcement at a forum on the nation's space technology development, Xinhua news agency said Wednesday.
Ye said Russia will launch the spacecraft in 2009 and it will carry China-made survey equipment. The mission will collect samples on Mars and the planet's nearest moon, according to Xinhua.
Sun Laiyan, of the China National Space Administration, said in June that China would focus on the moon and Mars in its deep space exploration program over the next five years.
The program calls for stepping up international cooperation, he said.
China has previously said it hopes to launch a lunar exploration satellite next year as part of a program that aims to place an unmanned vehicle on the moon by 2010.
In 2003 it successfully launched astronaut Yang Liwei into orbit, becoming the third country after the Soviet Union and the United States to put a man in space.
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