China’s Aeronautic team will deliver Mars samples to Earth in 2031, two years ahead of the joint NASA-ESA effort. Tianwen-1 chief designer Sun Zezhou revealed that the mission will launch in late 2028 and that the return sample will arrive in July 2031.
According to SpaceNews, China’s Tianwen-3 mission will have a lander, ascent vehicle, orbiter, and return module. Each combination will launch independently, resulting in a single Mars landing in September 2029. If it is successful, it will deliver the first Mars samples to Earth.
On a Twitter post they showed the said mission:
China may be successful in obtaining the sample because they attempted it in a different mission in 2020 to obtain their first Lunar Sample since the Soviet Union in 1976.
The country’s Zhurong Rover has also discovered evidence of water on Mars dating back 700 million years.
