China and SpaceX envision reaching Mars in different ways

While Chinese scientists vowed to bring back rock samples from Mars to Earth with two unmanned vehicles in 2028-2031, their American counterparts said they will launch an uncrewed spaceship to the Red Planet in 2026 and a crewed one in 2028.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) plans to carry out its Tianwen-3 mission through two launches in 2028, aiming to bring back 500 grams of rock samples from Mars and searching for signs of life on the planet.

In the Tianwen 3 plan, the lander or sample collector (landing-ascending combination) and deliverer or return module (orbiter-returner combination) will be launched to Mars separately, Liu Jizhong, director of the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of CNSA, said at at the 2nd International Deep Space Exploration Conference in Anhui on September 5.

Chinese space engineers will have to tackle key technologies such as collecting samples on the Martian surface, taking off from the Red Planet, rendezvous on the orbit around Mars, as well as planetary protection, he said.

Some media, including the South China Morning Post, said the launch of the Tianwen-3 mission to Mars in 2028 is two years earlier than previously planned.

But in fact Sun Zezhou, chief designer of the Tianwen-1 mission, had already said in April last year that the earliest time for China to launch space rockets to Mars for a sampling mission would be 2028 while the mission probably would involve two rocket launches.

Sun had also at that theme elaborated on the mission’s 13 steps, which will be executed through methods such as in-situ and remote-sensing detections.

Although Liu’s latest speech did not contain new information, it showed that Beijing’s Mars-sampling project remains on track.