China is going ahead with its first mission to Mars with a launch planned for July this year, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) confirmed on Sunday. Along with the Mars mission, China is planning to have an orbital space station up and running within the next few years and is already hashing out plans for manned missions … An outside dark horse might be Blue Origin, as Bezos has hinted at a “New Armstrong” rocket, and he has … The mission’s planned payload includes an orbiter, a lander, and a rover. The mission’s planned payload includes an orbiter, a lander, and a rover. China’s National Space Science Center is preparing an interplanetary mission to Mars that will launch in July 2020. China completed its first public test of a Mars lander in November last year, keeping the country on track for an unmanned exploration mission to the red planet in 2020. The name "Tianwen", which means Heavenly Questions or Questions to Heaven, comes from the long poem of the same name written by Qu Yuan (about 340-278 BC), one of the greatest poets of ancient China. China successfully delivered two rovers to the Moon, in 2013 and 2019, as part of its Chang’e exploration program. Also on rt.com China to ask ‘Questions to Heaven’ with country’s 1st mission to Mars later this year. Tianwen-1 (known as Huoxing-1, HX-1 during development) is a planned mission by China to send a spacecraft, which consists of an orbiter, a lander and a rover, to Mars. China plans to develop and launch an orbiter, lander and rover to Mars in July or August 2020 [123] [124] with a Long March 5 heavy lift rocket. China's first attempted mission to Mars, the Yinghuo-1 space probe, was lost with Russia's sample return mission to Phobos, Fobos-Grunt in 2011–2012. China already is a galactic pioneer after landing the first probe on the far side of the moon in January. A manned mission may be coming to Mars sooner than Andrew Weir predicted in his novel The Martian, later turned into a film by Ridley Scott and set in 2035. China reveals name, logo for its 'Tianwen' 1st Mars landing mission. NASA is working to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon within the next decade to uncover new scientific discoveries and lay the foundation for private companies to build a lunar economy. Beijing’s ambitious space vision for the future includes a manned lunar mission and a national manned space station. Despite the cost, estimated at hundreds of billions of pounds, and immense technical difficulties, China boasts that it will beat the United States with a manned mission to Mars.