BEIJING – China plans to bring Mars samples to Earth in 2031, after the orbiter mission and Mars explorer Tianwen 1 arrived on the Red Planet in February 2021. China’s plan is faster than NASA and ESA’s target of bringing Mars samples to Earth with the Perseverance rover mission in 2033.
China’s target to bring Mars samples to Earth by 2031 was conveyed by Sun Zezhou, Chief Designer of the Tianwen 1 Mars Orbiter and Explorer Mission during a seminar at Nanjing University, Monday, June 20, 2022. Zezhou explained that the Tianwen 1 mission is planned to take off from Mars in late 2028 and arrive return to Earth in July 2031.
“A complex multi-launch mission will have a simpler architecture compared to the joint NASA-ESA project, with one Mars landing and no rover sampling different sites,” SpaceNews wrote. /6/2022).
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China already has experience in sending samples from the moon to Earth with the Chang’e 5 mission. China successfully landed the Chang’e 5 mission on the moon in December 2020 and shortly thereafter delivered the first lunar samples to Earth. This was the first since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976.
China also already has considerable experience exploring Mars thanks to the Tianwen 1 mission, which launched in July 2020 and arrived on the Red Planet in February 2021. Tianwen 1 consists of an orbiter as well as a lander and rover, called Zhurong; this final duo landed in May 2021.
The Tianwen 1 and Zhurong orbiters are both still going strong. The rover entered a planned hibernation period in May this year to try to outlast the frigid Red Planet winter.
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“China’s efforts will be more efficient, with soil and rock collected from one small area through surface sampling, drilling, and intelligent mobile sampling, potentially using four-legged robots,” SpaceNews wrote.
