China has ambitious plans: in about four years, it wants to launch a space mission to bring samples from Mars back to Earth. No country or company has ever achieved this. So far, rocks from Mars have been studied on the Red Planet and data has been sent back to Earth.
“Because Mars is much farther away than the moon, two launches will be needed to complete the sample return mission due to the limited delivery capacity of our current rockets,” one of the project planners, Liu Jizhong, told state news agency Xinhua during a meeting conference in eastern China. Two launch vehicles of the “Langer Marsch 5” type would be used for this, he explained.
China had already sent a rover to Earth’s neighboring planet in 2020 with the “Tianwen-1” Mars mission. This time, Chinese scientists want to search for life on the Red Planet by taking samples from the surface, in the air and through deep drilling.
According to the Chinese National Space Administration, “Tianwen-3” consists of modules for landing on Mars, taking off from there, a spacecraft in orbit around Earth and a return module. If the mission succeeds, it would be a great success for Chinese space travel.
“Difficult and challenging mission”
Liu expected a very difficult and challenging mission. The engineers would have to manage to collect the samples, lift them in a rocket from Mars and connect them to the return module in the planet’s orbit – all without contaminating the planet.
It is not yet known where exactly the probe will land on Mars. The mission will launch from the Wenchang spaceport on Hainan Island in southern China. The departure date was given as around 2028.
The American space agency NASA has also had similar plans for some time. The Mars rover ‘Perseverance’ had even collected rocks for transport. But in April of this year, NASA announced that it would not continue with the plans for the time being because the costs were too high. New ideas are being sought.
Source: Krone
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