China is on track to launch its Tianwen-3 mission to Mars in 2028, two years earlier than previously planned, while the US’ sample mission to the planet is in limbo amid major delays and ballooning budgets.

On Thursday, Liu Jizhong, chief designer of China’s Mars mission, told the Second International Conference on Deep Space Exploration in Huangshan, Anhui province, that the team aimed to bring back around 600 grams (21 oz) of Martian soil.

The timeline for the mission has also been updated from an earlier 2030 estimate, a change that suggests a rising confidence by China in its ability to get the technology right for the complex operation, according to Namrata Goswami, a space policy researcher at Arizona State University in the US.

A 2028 launch date should see Martian samples returned to Earth around July 2031, according to a previous presentation made by Tianwen-1 mission lead Sun Zezhou at Nanjing University in 2022.

 

It is a bet that, if it pays off, could see China take the lead in the race for Mars. And, Goswami said, whichever country was first to complete a successful Mars mission would become the global leader in space exploration.

“It would mean that nation has achieved the ability to safely land, collect samples, launch a rocket from Mars and transport the samples 33 million miles [53 million km] back to Earth,” she said.

Astrophysicist Quentin Parker, from the University of Hong Kong, described the timeline as “aggressive”.

“There’s now a real chance China can beat the US in being the first to return samples from Mars,” he said.

China is also offering 25kg (55 pounds) of space for international payloads to piggyback on the Tianwen-3 orbiter, according to Parker, who attended the two-day meeting along with around 100 international participants from countries including the United States, Europe, South Africa, Thailand, Pakistan, the UAE and Kuwait.

He said the meeting showed “in a very friendly and open-handed way” China’s willingness to collaborate and have others take part in its exploration of the moon and Mars.

Explaining plans for the mission at the conference on Thursday, Liu said two Long March 5 rockets would send the Tianwen-3 lander-ascender combination as well as the orbiter-return module combination to Mars.

 

The landing, sampling, lift-off and in-orbit sample transfer would build on key technologies used previously, including the Chang’e-5 and Chang’e-6 moon sample return missions and the Tianwen-1 Mars landing mission, he said.

Tianwen-3 will use three methods to collect soil from the red planet’s surface: multi-point surface scooping, fixed-point deep drilling and rover-based sampling, Liu told state news agency Xinhua.

This “grab-and-go” approach will be different from Nasa’s.

Nasa’s Perseverance rover, which has been exploring an ancient lake bed in Mars’ Jezero crater since 2021, has filled 25 sample tubes originally planned to be collected and returned by a separate Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission.

But there has been uncertainty surrounding the MSR mission since September last year, when an independent review found it would cost up to US$11 billion and would not be completed until as late as 2040.

In June, Nasa asked seven aerospace companies, including SpaceX, Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin, to come up with “out of the box” concepts to help deliver those samples faster and cheaper.

The US space agency said it is aiming to return the samples to Earth in the 2030s.

But with the optimal launch window for Mars only open for a few weeks every 26 months when the planets are closest in their orbits, there is still doubt whether that timeline can be achieved.

“I think that no decision has been made about the Nasa MSR, and it’s still uncertain what will happen,” Harvard astronomer and space historian Jonathan McDowell said.

With China and the US both scrambling to be the first to get their hands on rocks from the planet, McDowell said analysing samples from Mars was the next logical step in expanding our understanding of both our neighbouring planet and the solar system in general.

“So it’s a high science priority,” he said. “I don’t think it is helpful to think of it as a race – it’s just the next obvious thing to do if your budget allows it.”

Robotic exploration of Mars started in 1960. The US and China are the only two countries that have successfully touched down on the planet’s surface, though neither has yet brought back rock samples.

Liu said the search for signs of life would be Tianwen-3’s top scientific goal. China would strictly abide by international agreements on planetary protection to prevent contamination on Mars and preserve the integrity of the samples, he added.

Chinese scientists are working to identify potential landing sites for Tianwen-3. Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration programme, said in April that the country was already planning to build the world’s first Mars sample laboratory.

Meanwhile, India has also announced its own mission to land on Mars by 2025 with a rover and a helicopter. The European Space Agency also plans to launch its ExoMars rover in 2028.

The new timeline of Tianwen-3 meant that China’s plans for a human Mars programme, including setting up a research base on Mars by 2045, would also move ahead, Goswami said.