Back on Earth, the Chinese Mars simulation base welcomes the first visitors

JINCHANG, China (Reuters) – A hundred enthusiastic Chinese teenagers have completed a five-hour visit to a space colony in a desolate backdrop close to the desert planet of Tatooine, the world of origin. Luke Skywalker.

They were not on the set of Star Wars, but in a Mars-based simulation base built by the Chinese in the arid and wind-swept hills of Gansu Province.

The facility, which includes several interconnected modules, including a greenhouse and a dummy decompression chamber, opened on Wednesday.

Base 1 of Camp de Mars, which covers about one-fifth of the football field, was created by a media company and officials in Gansu, a poor province in northwestern China.

Officials hope the camp, located about 40 km from Jinchang City, will boost tourism and make visitors feel like they are on the red planet.

An investment plan of 2.5 billion yuan ($ 374 million) will expand the site to 67 km2 and attract 2 million visitors annually by 2030.

"I am very happy to be here," said a 13-year-old student from Jinchang. "We saw the monolith, a crater and a cave. It's better than the Mars I imagined.

In the sci-fi movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" of 1968, a mysterious black monolith appears in front of a tribe of ape-men of the African savannah in one of the scenes. most memorable in the history of Western cinema.

The Chinese space program has sparked public imagination and appetite for science and science fiction.

In January, a Chinese space probe landed for the first time on the other side of the moon, a feat regarded with pride by the ordinary Chinese people.

China is developing powerful rockets to help realize a more ambitious dream of sending a probe to Mars in 2020. After that, scientists hope to explore the asteroids and even land them.

"A nation needs people who look at the stars," said Bai Fan, CEO of Jinchang Star Universe, a media company that has developed the foundation.

"We hope that the basics will allow them to feel the spirit of space exploration and not to experience the technology that underlies them."

In addition to being a tourist attraction, the camp collaborated with the China Astronaut Center (CCA) to turn the facility into an astronaut training center.

The camp is not the only site on the theme of Mars in China. On the neighboring Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, China unveiled its first "village" on Mars in March.