According to a senior official, China’s historic effort to bring samples back from Mars could begin as early as 2028. This is two years earlier than originally stated.

Liu Jizhong, the chief designer of China’s Tianwen-3 deep space exploration mission, said that two launches would be carried out “around 2028” in order to collect Martian samples. He made this statement at an event on deep space exploration held last week in Anhui Province.

The 2028 target is in line with a launch plan described by a senior scientist involved with the Tianwen program back in 2022. The 2028 goal is a return to the launch plan described by a scientist in 2022 for the Tianwen Program – a profile which would see samples returning to Earth by 2031.

China has made a number of recent comments following its historic success in retrieving samples from the farside of the Moon.

The effort of NASA and the European Space Agency, to retrieve Mars samples is still being assessed amid concerns about budget, complexity and risks. US space agency, who first landed on Mars in the 1970s, is now evaluating more cost-effective and faster plans that will allow them to return samples sooner than 2040.

It would be a major achievement for China’s ambitious program in space and its leader Xi Jinping, who has stated that it is his “eternal goal” to turn the country into a space power.

China’s advancements – including its uncrewed moon missions and establishment of its orbital space station — come at a time when the US and other nations have increased their own space programs amid an increasing focus on potential access to resources as well as scientific benefits from lunar and deep-space exploration.

China’s Tianwen-3 will have as a priority to find traces of life in Mars. According to Chinese state-run media, Liu stated that the mission would also try to achieve technical breakthroughs for surface sampling, ascent and takeoff from Mars’ surface, as well a rendezvous with a spacecraft in Mars orbit.

Liu also spoke to CGTN (the international division of China’s state broadcaster) about the challenges that the mission will bring. The mission is slated to include two initial launches, and a rocket launch from another planet, which would be a first.

The return mission will require launch from the surface on Mars. He said that because it is a small launch, it would be difficult to guarantee the reliability of the flight.

Liu, who was quoted, said that China would participate in international cooperation surrounding the mission. This includes carrying other countries’ samples and data, as well planning future Mars research.

Missions to Mars

Scientists have long considered Mars a vital research destination. It could provide information on the existence of alien life and our origins within the solar system.

In 2021, China’s Tianwen series of planetary exploration missions, which roughly translates as “questions to Heaven”, had its first successful mission when the Tianwen-1 probe successfully reached Mars’ orbit, and the Zhurong Rover was deployed to the planet’s surfaces.

Zhurong’s landing on Utopia Planitia, a vast plain in the middle of the planet that is 30 million miles away from Earth, made China, after the Soviet Union, the third country to land there.

The primary mission of the rover was to look for ancient signs and investigate minerals, climate and water distribution in the plain.

According to research from 2022, the data returned by the rover during its initial survey of Utopia Planitia suggests that water was present in the basin tens and millions of years before when scientists thought Mars was dry and cold.

The rover, which was originally designed to work on Mars for 90 days, lasted 358 days, and traveled 1,921 m (6,302 ft) around the planet. The rover went into hibernation on May 20, 2022, due to an “unpredictable” accumulation of dust.

In 1976, the US made its first landing in the planet with its Viking 1 Mission. This mission included a lander which operated for over six years. This was an achievement that exceeded the Soviet Union’s Mars 3 mission, which landed in the Martian soil in 1971 but only sent a signal for about 20 seconds.

NASA’s Perseverance Rover, which landed in Jezero Crater in 2021, has been collecting samples since then for later return to Earth.

NASA’s Bill Nelson, who was appointed chief scientist by NASA in 2013, called the planned Mars Sample Return Mission “one of NASA’s most complex missions ever undertaken”.

In April, the US space agency said it was looking for new and innovative ways to collect surface samples after its budget plan ballooned up to $11 billion, with a deadline of 2040. In June, the agency announced that it would support a few 90-day studies in order to find “more affordable” and “faster” methods.