China can beat both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) in the race to bring Martian samples to Earth.
The Thien Van 3 mission will include many vehicles. Image: AzerNews
The Chinese space agency may bring samples from Mars to Earth first under a plan to return rocks and sediments from the red planet in 2031, according to Live Science. In an article published in the journal National Science Review, a research team from the Deep Space Exploration Laboratory and collaborating institutes planned Thien Van 3, a Mars landing mission consisting of two spacecraft. According to Jizhong Liu, chief designer of Tianwen 3, the mission is on track to launch in 2028.
Thien Van 3 will include a lander, an orbiting vehicle, an orbiting ship and a return module to Earth. This mission could also use a helicopter and six-legged robot to collect samples far away from the lander. Zengqian Hou, a researcher at the Deep Space Exploration Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Geosciences, said there are 86 potential locations being considered for the Tianwen 3 landing site. The majority centered on Chryse Planitia, a smooth plain north of the Martian equator, and Utopia Planitia, the largest impact basin on Mars, where China landed a rover in 2021.
These sites are very promising for the Tianwen 3 mission’s key goal of finding signs of past life on Mars, according to Hou and his colleagues. The selection criteria were relatively easy landing terrain with rocks and sediments that may still retain traces of ancient Martian life.
The launch date of 2028 will bring the Thien Van 3 spacecraft back to Earth in 2031. A one-way flight between Earth and Mars usually lasts 7 – 11 months, depending on the location of the planets. The sample will be analyzed using a variety of methods, including mass spectrometry to determine its elemental composition and isotopic analysis to look at elemental ratios that can reveal the past existence of these colonies. living function.
If Tianwen 3 takes place on schedule, this mission will help China beat NASA and ESA in bringing Martian rocks to Earth nearly a decade earlier. In April, NASA announced that the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, in cooperation with ESA, would be delayed until the 2030s. According to the current plan, the MSR lander will launch in 2035 and the mission will bring back samples. return will not take place before 2040.
Recently, China’s Chang’e 6 mission also brought the first sample from the dark side of the Moon to Earth. Preliminary analysis results reveal the first evidence of volcanic activity in the far side of the Moon, proving that volcanoes erupted there 2.8 billion years ago.