07 March 2022
Commercial spacecraft is a trend in the development of aerospace, said Yang Liwei, China's first taikonaut and also deputy director of China's Manned Space Programme. Companies are encouraged to take part in the commercial programme, which will boost aerospace development. Space tourism is less a matter of technology but of demand, he explained.
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07 March 2022
Chinese scientists and engineers will need to solve a host of technological challenges to accomplish an ambitious sample-return mission to Mars, said Wu Weiren a senior scientist with CNSA. The currently planned sample return mission will build on the procedures tested with the CE-5 lunar mission. Since the hardware for a Mars mission will be much heavier, a more powerful rocket is needed. Wu also gave an overview on the CE-6 and CE-7 lunar missions. 
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RELATED: This week's DongFangHour News Roundup with Jean Deville is reporting on the same topic. Jean explains China's 3-step approach to Mars exploration, including the current Tianwen 1 mission and the planned sample return mission and future human exploration.
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08 March 2022
The landing site of China’s first Mars rover, Zhurong, has shown notable evidence of relatively strong topography compared to other Mars landing sites and a surface shaped by wind and potentially by water, according to initial results published in Nature Geoscience. These findings suggest that this landing site is conducive to future exploration.
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Link to the article in Nature Geoscience

08 March 2022
Wang Yaping has recently recorded a video message for the United Nations office in Geneva, Switzerland, sending her greetings to women around the world on the occasion of today's International Women's Day.
She said that space has never changed its environment or lowered its threshold because of the arrival of women, and that ample flight data show that there are no significant differences in the ability of the sexes to adapt and work in space. Women "can all complete the same training and assessment as male astronauts at a high standard. And many physical and psychological characteristics of women can play an advantage in space, being complementary to male astronauts," she said. "It is conceivable that more and more women will participate in human spaceflight missions. It will have a very important impact on the large-scale and long-term human exploration of space in the future," she said.
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