The Chinese Space Programme: Ambitions, achievements and perspectives

A lecture organised on Friday 16 April 2021 from 11:30 to 13:00.

Online: Webex (the link will be sent after registration)

Free entry

Registration required via confucius@uni.lu ou +352 46 66 44 4964

Prof. Michel Blanc was born in 1949 and graduated at Ecole Polytechnique, and then at University Paris 6 where he received his PhD degree. He is an Emeritus professor and planetary scientist working at the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, a joint laboratory of CNRS, CNES and Université de Toulouse, France.

His research focuses on the exploration of the solar system, particularly giant planets systems, via space exploration. He has been the first coordinator of the Europlanet project of the European Union from 2005 to 2012, and the initiator of ESA’s JUICE mission to the Jupiter system. He has published about 200 articles in peer-reviewed international journals. He is a member of the Air and Space Academy, of the International Academy of Astronautics, and of the Academia Europaea. Michel Blanc has been for several years the executive director of the International Space Science Institute in Beijing, and a visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

China, which places its investments in Research and Development at the center of its development strategy, is today one of the emerging space powers, with spectacular progress year after year. China is present in all key areas of space activities: the infrastructure, with a comprehensive panoply of launchers and four space ports; Earth observation, with a strong focus on the monitoring and prediction of natural disasters; human space flight, with the establishment of a permanent space station in low-Earth orbit as soon as next year, and space sciences. Its Lunar and Deep space programme is sort of the flagship of its fast expansion in space. The lecturer will review the organisation, some of the main achievements and the mid-term perspectives of this remarkably successful and fast-growing space programme.