China has been making headlines when it comes to space ambitions and they are planning to do more.
The country's lunar ambitions are expected to take great leap forward as leaders of the space industry announced that they will send more probes to the moon in order to explore the northern and southern poles by 2020.
In a report released on Monday, October 1, Li Guoping, director of the Department of System Engineering at the Chinese Space Administration, said that there will be four missions that will be mounted in the next program as China tries to establish its goal of sending taikonauts to the moon and build a permanent base there.
China's lunar exploration names Chang'e, was after its goddess of the moon in Chinese methology, was launched in 2003.
The Chang'e-4 lunar probe is reportedly scheduled to land on the moon by the end of this year, becoming the first man-made spacecraft to explore the far side of the space object. Three other missions are expected to bring more moon samples back to the Earth.
According to Li, the exploration mission to the poles of the moon aims to study the age of the moon's soil, the composition of the solar wind's isotopes of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and helium. Also, they will try to find out whether ice exists in the northern polar regions.
Aside from these, China is now considering setting up a base on the moon and create a robot and also sent human lunar exploration missions but they cannot yet provide the timetable for these plans.
