China is vying for space supremacy and plans to launch a historic Mars mission "around 2028."

As the US and other nations have stepped up their own space programs in response to a growing focus on the potential access to resources and scientific benefits of lunar and deep space exploration, China has made strides in space exploration, including the establishment of its own orbital space station and unmanned lunar missions.

Finding signs of life on Mars would be a top priority for China's Tianwen-3 mission. According to Chinese state media, Liu stated last week that the mission would also try to make technological advances in surface sampling, takeoff and ascent from the Martian surface, as well as a spacecraft rendezvous in Mars' orbit.

Liu emphasized the difficulties of the mission in a different interview with CGTN, China's state broadcaster's international branch. The mission calls for two first rocket launches in addition to an extraordinary rocket launch off a different planet to retrieve the samples.

"The return mission must be launched from Mars' surface. Since this is essentially a small rocket launch, it will be extremely challenging to guarantee the dependability of the entire flight," he stated. Liu was also quoted as saying that China would participate in international cooperation related to the mission, including transporting payloads from other nations, exchanging samples and data, and organizing future research on Mars.

Mars missions

Scientists have long considered Mars to be an important research site that may hold secrets about the existence of life beyond Earth as well as our own solar system's beginnings.

The Tianwen planetary exploration mission series, named after the Chinese phrase "questions to heaven," achieved its first notable accomplishment in 2021 when the Zhurong rover was sent to the surface of Mars by the Tianwen-1 probe.

China became the third nation to set foot on the planet, after the Soviet Union and the United States, on May 15, 2021, when Zhurong made landfall in Utopia Planitia, a vast plain located more than 30 million miles from Earth.

The main objectives of the rover were to look for evidence of prehistoric life and study the plain's minerals, environment, and water and ice distribution. According to research published in 2022, data from the rover's initial survey of the basin revealed that the Utopia Planitia basin may have once supported water during a period of time tens of millions of years ago, when many scientists thought Mars was arid and cold.

The rover was supposed to operate on Mars for ninety days, but it ended up staying on the planet for three weeks and covering 1,921 meters (6,302 feet). Due to what Chinese scientists described as a "unpredictable accumulation" of dust, it entered hibernation in May 2022.

With its Viking 1 mission in 1976, the US made its first landing on the planet, bringing with it a lander that operated for over six years. The Soviet Union's Mars 3 spacecraft, which touched down on the Martian surface in 1971 but only sent out a signal for about 20 seconds, was surpassed in this accomplishment.

NASA's Perseverance rover made the most recent US landing on Mars when it landed in the Jezero crater in 2021. Since then, it has been gathering samples in preparation for a future return to Earth.

The US's proposed Mars sample return mission has been dubbed "one of the most complex missions NASA has ever undertaken" by NASA chief Bill Nelson earlier this year.

After a budget plan that ballooned to as much as $11 billion with a timeframe of sample returns by 2040, the US space agency announced in April that it was looking for new, creative ways to retrieve surface samples. It declared in June that it would support several ninety-day studies aimed at identifying "faster and more affordable" techniques.