It's impressive how far China has come in just 2 decades. How significant is this achievement space technology wise? I still remember the first rover on Mars and it was a really big deal in my eyes back then.
The other significant thing is that there is now a bit more urgency to the matter of getting humans back to the moon and eventually to Mars. The Chinese are preparing to set up their own space station and are obviously interested in going to the moon and Mars and they seem to have the technical capability to get there. It's a bit like the early days of the space age when NASA and the Russians were competing for getting there first. NASA seems busy fighting domestic battles for funding rather than getting stuff done. They got a lucky break with SpaceX having a bit more focus on that front and proposing something that might actually fly. Now they need to get serious about actually making that happen. If they don't, somebody else will.
Is it the Vikram lander that was destroyed while landing because of a software glitch?
The Long March 8 architecture looks like it’s suitable for adaptation for first stage recovery, and they have expressed the intention to attempt it, so China are lining up to overtake Russia as the strongest competitor to the US in space technology.
[1] https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-eur...
Or is going to the moon and Mars the achievement of certain parts of humanity, to be kept secret from other unwanted parts of humanity?
China did a really good job figuring out the know-hows and had their domestic team geared up for the job. That is nothing to be dismissed, like tired 'China can't do shit without stealing our technology' circlejerks would like to indicate.
They didn’t achieve this in a vacuum, let’s not perpetuate the notion that China is isolated from the rest of the world.
That said, congratulations to China for this achievement, and the more rovers we have on mars, the more science we learn. I hope China also has a new space telescope on their to-do list.