Two years before NASA and the European Space Agency aim to do so, China is planning to take Mars samples to Earth, according to media reports.
According to Space News, the target date was announced in a Monday presentation by the chief designer of the mission that arrived at the Red Planet in February 2021.
According to a report, a presentation at a seminar says that China will launch a two-launch mission with a sample return to Earth in 2031.
China's Chang'e 5 landing site is shown in the amazing panorama.
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The multi-launch mission will have simpler architecture than the NASA-ESA project, with a single Mars landing and no rovers sampling different sites.
Due to the mass requirements of the mission, NASA decided to develop a second Mars lander. Mars samples will arrive on Earth in 2033, instead of 2031.
The American space agency's Perseverance rover has been exploring the Jezero Crater for over a year. The samples will be placed on an American-made Mars ascent vehicle. The sample container will be grabbed by a European Earth returner when it is launched.
China's effort will be more streamlined, with dirt and rock collected from one small area via surface sampling, drilling and mobile intelligent sampling.
China knows how to deliver samples from the moon. After touching down on the moon in December 2020, the nation's Chang'e 5 mission delivered the first lunar samples since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 did so in 1976.
China has a lot of Mars experience thanks to the launch of Tianwen 1 in July 2020. The landers and rovers of Tianwen 1 touched down in May 2021.
Both the Tianwen 1 and Zhurong are doing well. In May of this year, the rover entered a hibernation to survive the Red Planet winter.
The administration of President Joe Biden warned that Chinese exploration could pose a threat to American interests.
The Chinese program is "adding a new element about whether we want to be serious" about NASA sending humans back to the moon, according to NASA chief Bill Nelson. The goal of NASA's program is to put boots on the lunar surface in the 20th century.
China has been increasing its visibility in the space community. In June it released a high-resolution map of the moon, and in May it released plans for a sample return mission to the asteroids.
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