China has stepped on the accelerator in space sovereignty and is already at cruising speed: in 2025 it has broke his record of rocket launches with 80 units throughout the year and only in December complete four space missions. It has even successfully executed a stress test to verify that they can level up. So much so that they already have in mind exploring space in search of an Earth 2.0.
China’s plan to find a new Earth. This is the name of the video that the Chinese network CGTN published a few days ago in their Hot Take space. This footage details four missions that the China National Space Administration (CNSA) has scheduled within the 15th Five Year Plan of the country (2026–2030) to support its position as a first-order space power and whose spectrum is as broad as we will see below.
Among these missions is a radio astronomy experiment to study celestial objects by measuring their radio emissions, in this case aimed at better understanding the hidden side of the moon; a solar observatory that will investigate meteorological conditions such as solar wind or geomagnetic storms, the construction of a space telescope that will monitor black holes and neutron stars and a satellite hunter of planets outside the solar system. The latter has an ambitious goal: to search for a planet analogous to Earth.
A peculiarity of these missions is that They are run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), an independent institution of the Chinese Space Agency and its major space projects. The CAS manages its own missions (such as HXMT or Wukong) independently and do not follow government guidelines, but are born from proposals by researchers and universities, following a low-cost and flexible model similar to NASA’s Discovery program.
China is looking for an Earth 2.0 and to know space much better
Hongmeng Project. This plan It intends to deploy ten low-frequency telescopes that will orbit the moon. Like other observatories focused on its hidden side, they will hear radio frequency signals from the period known as the “Dark Age of the Universe“. This time corresponds to a time of the early universe where there were no stars or galaxies or planets, only neutral hydrogen that absorbed light, creating darkness, and emitted a characteristic radio signal 21 centimeters.
Why the hidden side of the moon? Essentially, because it is free of radio interference from terrestrial sources and regular emissions from the Sun. This mission is complementary to others such as that of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to study those early epochs, which are currently undetectable to conventional telescopes.
The Kuafu-2 solar mission. The two in its name already reveals something: there was a Kuafu-1 launched in 2022 and also known as the Advanced Space-based Solar Observatory (ASO-S). The first was launched to study the sun’s magnetic field and its phenomena, such as sudden and intense releases of electromagnetic radiation (flares) or coronal mass ejections.
But Kuafu-2 will go one step further: it will be the first satellite to orbit the hard-to-reach areas of the Sun, the polar regions, thus providing data on the solar magnetic field and the dynamics of the solar cycle (which lasts approximately 11 years). With this information, the scientific team hopes to be able to predict solar storms and their cascading effects throughout the solar system.
Screenshot CCTV News
In search of a planet analogous to Earth. Exo-Earth is a satellite exoplanet prospecting which the show has defined as a “planetary detective on a mission to see if Earth is one of a kind.” Its objective will be to monitor thousands of stars in our galaxy in search of rocky planets of a size comparable to that of Earth that orbit within the habitable zone of their stars, that is, at a sufficient distance for liquid water to exist on their surface. An analogue to Earth. This observatory will be launched in 2028.
How do the laws of physics work out there?. The fourth and last is the Enhanced X-ray Polarimetry and Timing Observatory, an international project led by the Chinese giant that combines X-ray observations with “unprecedented polarimetry and timing capabilities.” Or what is the same, the ultra-precise measurement of brightness variations over time and the study of the orientation of the oscillations of electromagnetic waves to infer the geometry of magnetic fields.
If it sounds dense and scientific, that’s because it is: it helps you learn how the laws of physics apply in environments as extreme as around black holes, neutron stars, supernovae, and other astrophysical objects. Its technical proposal details that this observatory will have advanced spectroscopic focusing systems and polarimetric focusing systems. The launch is planned for 2030.
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Image | Xinhua
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