China’s Tianwen-3 Mission Could Beat the U.S. in the Race to Grab Mars Rocks
On May 14, 2021, the Chinese Tianwen-1 landing fell from space to the sequence through the sky above the vast mars’ utopia plain, with an aeroshell protecting it from heat and plasma from its high-speed atmospheric entrance. After exceeding his parachutes and pulsed his engines to concentrate on an accelerated landing site, the spacecraft attracted safely to the red planet, where he deployed a rover, Zhurong, to explore the surrounding extraterrestrial landscape. This engineering feat was extremely significant, confirming China as a major player in planetary exploration. With the touch of Tianwen-1, China has become the only other nation to have managed to land in Mars in addition to the United States, the mission also paved the way for a much more ambitious and unprecedented project.
This project, Tianwen-3, is expected to be launched via two long rockets on March 5 from Wenchang Spaceport on the Chinese island of Hainan at the end of 2028. A launch will carry the Tianwen-3 landing, while the other will carry on March orbit of the mission, which is also a terrestrial recovery vehicle. The mission aims to take samples from Martian rock and soil for delivery on earth, where subsequent studies could, potentially, redefine our understanding of life itself and our place in the cosmos.
“Tianwen-3 will be the first mission aimed at bringing material from another planet to seek signs of life,” explains Li Yiliang, professor of astrobiology at the University of Hong Kong and one of the authors of an article published in Natural astronomy June 19, which offers new details on the mission. (Tianwen-2, another mission to return from Chinese samples, launched in May 2025 but is linked to an almost terminal asteroid as well as a comet; China also succeeded two successful lunar samples, Chang’e 5 and Chang’e 6.)
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Tianwen-3 will use the same approach as Tianwen-1 to make Planetfall in an landing area still to be selected. The vagaries of spacecraft engineering require, however, that the site be somewhere in the average latitudes of the northern hemisphere of the planet; It must also be at an altitude of at least three kilometers below the average elevation of the planet so that more thin air in March can slow down the descent of Tianwen-3. The landing will use the proven technology of Chinese lunar explorations, drilling as deep as two meters for underground samples and collect the surface material. In addition, a helicopter drone – depending on the lead of nasa pioneering ingenuity flights – will collect samples of additional rocks and bulk particles less than 100 meters from the Tianwen -3 landing site.
The landing will operate for about two months on the surface, in which it will use useful scientific loads such as a radar penetrating to the ground and a Raman spectrometer to collect more data on the wider geological context for the samples collected. When the time comes, he will draw a solid rocket booster to send a cartridge containing at least 500 grams of equipment in the Mars orbit to dock with the spaceship awaiting orbit turns. The possible return trip should bring back the samples of Tianwen-3 to the house in 2031.
Once on earth, the samples will be quickly secured and transported to a tailor -made marsh sample laboratory, where they will be widely analyzed while carefully following “planetary protection” policies intended to prevent any cross contamination of another potential world.
Although the objectives of Tianwen-3 range from the study of the interior of Mars to the study of its vaporous atmosphere, the scientists working on the mission are the most impatient of what it could reveal on the possible or even existing life of the planet. If, in fact, everything that has already lived in the red planet, then the samples of Tianwen -3 could in theory contain various signs revealing its presence – of biosignatures.
A convincing biosignature could come in different types, known as Li. For example, Tianwen-3 scientists will seek molecules directly produced by Martian organisms to fulfill known biochemical functions, similar to DNA and RNA molecules on which life forms on earth are based to store and transmit genetic information. Another biosignature is the fractionation of biogenic isotopes – the distinctive manner whose living organisms modify the natural relationships of stable isotopes in their ecosystems; On Earth, for example, biochemical processes such as photosynthesis prefer lighter carbon-12 rather than heavier carbon isotopes, leading to detectable changes in the proportions of these isotopes compared to the surrounding environment. A third approach, adds Li, would be to seek fossil evidence, such as the fingerprints that microbes can leave in mudstones and other sedimentary rocks with fine grain.
The astrobiological objective of China for its Martian explorations is “a commendable and ambitious objective”, explains Mahesh Anand, professor of planetary sciences and exploration at the open university in England. “This is exactly what we recommend over the years: looking for any sign of biogenic activity or even simply understand that there was a habitable environment. The rest of the world planetary science community would like to get answers to these questions. ”
The approach of China is simpler in many ways than the mission of return of samples Mars led by the United States (MSR), which is a joint project between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The MSR Battle Horse, Perseverance Rover from NASA, is already on Mars, where he spent more than four years collect dozens of carefully selected samples from Jezero Crater, a diversified site hosting an old river delta and other complex geological characteristics that can preserve the proofs of past life. On the other hand, the sampling of Tianwen -3 will be limited to its immediate environment, which will probably be duller – because although a boring and flat landscape can be of less astrobiological appeal, it is much easier to land. And the landing ellipse of the spaceship – the area in which Tianwen -3 is most likely to touch – spans about 50 kilometers, which means that a precision touch to visit particularly attractive targets is very unlikely.
But, largely because of its greatest complexity and its cost, MSR is threatened with cancellation of the Trump administration after years of delays and cost exceeding. The potential elimination of the project, however, would only be one of the many serious blows to the science of NASA, the funding for which the Trump administration proposed to reduce by almost half.
“The reason why NASA went with perseverance as this first step was that you would have this organized process, intentionally selected and well recorded and a contextual process of the origin of these rocks,” explains Casey Dreier, head of space policy of the Planetary Society, a defense group of American space. “It is not in any way to denigrate the achievements of the Chinese robotic program, but in general, I think you can characterize a lot of [its] Cheese as focused on symbols and focused on the capabilities on the direct return of science. »»
The basic plan of China led by engineering, with science afterwards, can limit questions to the questions that Tianwen-3 can answer realistically. But this methodical approach and step by step to build and gradually demonstrate critical capacities is exactly what has now positioned China to take the lead in the race to return the rocks of Mars. Meanwhile, the much more elaborate MSR has worse.
Dreier says that this moment, in which the United States seems to yield leadership in this area in China, will have implications for world spatial exploration.
“The United States must direct and work with its allies to continue investing in these great bold efforts to make potentially historical discoveries,” explains Dreier. If the White House has its way, he adds, then the perseverance samples only find their way to Earth after a program of human space flights even more complex, expensive and distant led by Spacex Lands Astronauts on Mars. This means, for the moment, China will get its luck during a first first in spatial exploration.
“The way I look at it is that China is starting to explore Mars,” says Anand. The richer science proposed from a complex MSR style plan is attractive, he says, but sticking to simplicity and short-term results clearly achievable “probably has a greater chance of turning science than planning something that could take decades”.
American and European scientists have seen it since generations obtaining samples like a “holy grail” for the exploration of March. For China, the recovery of Martian equipment is part of the strategic framework of its Tianwen program recommending the wider system, the name of which results in “celestial questions”. Beyond Tianwen-3 and his brothers and sisters to the asteroid and customs already raised, Tianwen-2, there is also Tianwen-4, planned for takeoff around 2029, which will target the Jupiter system and its intrigue Callisto of the Galilean moon. Future missions from the Tianwen series, notably at the Giants Ice Uranus and Neptune, are also under study.
For Li, Tianwen-3 remains the most convincing project of the Tianwen program, in part because its way to Mars and the back is so simple; Although high, its objectives always appear eminently at hand. “It is important that humanity understands its position in the solar system and the universe,” he said, because it would mark a deep stage of human history. And, on the threshold to try to bring back the first samples in March – with the possibility of finding the very first proof of extraterrestrial life within them – China is now particularly ready to reach this stage.
