(CNN) –– China’s historic attempt to bring Mars samples to Earth could launch in 2028, two years earlier than previously stated, according to a senior mission official.
The country’s Tianwen-3 mission would conduct two launches “around 2028” to recover Martian samples, mission chief designer Liu Jizhong said at a deep space exploration event in east China’s Anhui province. , last week.
The projected launch of the mission is even more ambitious than the 2030 goal that had been announced by space officials earlier this year, although the schedule has fluctuated in recent years. 2028 target appears to return to a launch plan described in 2022 by a high-level scientist involved in the Tianwen program, a mission profile that would allow samples to be brought to Earth in 2031.
The latest observations follow China’s historic success in obtaining the first samples from the far side of the Moon in June.
It also comes as NASA and the European Space Agency continue to evaluate an effort to recover samples from Mars amid concerns about budget, complexity and risk. The US space agency, which first landed on Mars decades ago, said it is evaluating faster and more affordable plans to allow a faster result than one that would have returned samples in 2040.
Becoming the first country to bring back samples from Mars would be a significant achievement for China’s ambitious space program and leader Xi Jinping’s stated “eternal dream” of turning the country into a space power.
China’s advances, such as unmanned lunar missions and the establishment of its own orbital space station, come at a time when the United States and other countries have stepped up their own space programs amid a growing focus on potential access to the resources and scientific benefits of lunar and deep space exploration.
According to Chinese state media, China’s Tianwen-3 mission will prioritize searching for traces of life on Mars. The mission will also attempt to achieve technical advances in surface sampling, takeoff and ascent from the Martian surface, as well as a rendezvous of the spacecraft in Mars orbit.
In an interview with CGTN, the international division of China’s state broadcaster, Liu highlighted the challenges associated with the mission, which is planned to include two initial rocket launches and an unprecedented rocket launch from another planet to bring back the samples.
“The return mission requires a launch from the surface of Mars. In reality, this is a small rocket launch, so it will be very difficult to guarantee the reliability of the entire flight,” he explained.
China will participate in international cooperation around the mission, including transporting payloads from other countries and sharing samples and data, as well as planning future research on Mars, Liu said.
Scientists have long considered Mars as a crucial research destination that could reveal information about the existence of life beyond Earth and about our own origins in the solar system.
China’s Tianwen planetary exploration missions, whose name translates something like “questions to heaven,” had its first success in 2021, when its Tianwen-1 probe reached Mars orbit and deployed the Zhurong rover to the planet’s surface. .
Zhurong’s landing on May 15, 2021 on a large plain known as Utopia Planitia made China the third country after the Soviet Union and the United States to land on the planet, which at its closest point is more than 48 millions of kilometers from the Earth.
The rover’s primary mission was to search for signs of ancient life and investigate the minerals, environment, and distribution of water and ice on the plain.
Data from the rover’s initial study of the basin suggested that the Utopia Planitia basin had contained water during a period of time tens of millions of years ago, when many scientists believed Mars was dry and cold, according to research. of 2022.
The rover was designed to operate for 90 days on Mars, but remained in orbit for 358 days and traveled 1,921 meters above the planet. It went into hibernation in May 2022 due to what Chinese scientists said was “unpredictable accumulation” of dust.
The United States first reached the planet in 1976 with its Viking 1 mission, which included a lander that operated for more than six years. It was a feat that surpassed the Soviet Union’s Mars 3 spacecraft, which landed on the Martian surface in 1971 but only transmitted a signal for a few 20 seconds.
The most recent US landing on Mars was NASA’s Perseverance rover, which touched down in Jezero Crater in 2021 and has since been collecting samples for later return to Earth.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson qualified the Mars sample return mission planned by the United States as “one of the most complex missions NASA has ever undertaken.”
The US space agency announced in April that it was looking for new and innovative ways to recover samples from the surface, after a budget plan increased to $11 billion with a sample return deadline of 2040. In June, advertisement that it was backing a handful of 90-day studies to find “more accessible and faster” methods.
