China announced an ambitious plan to carry out Tianwen-3 mission with two launches to retrieve samples from Mars and bring them back to Earth by around 2028, chief designer of the mission Liu Jizhong disclosed on Thursday.
The mission is expected to become the world’s first such attempt on the Red Planet, and will involve international payload cooperation, as well as global collaboration in sample and data sharing.
The plan is structured into 13 stages, employing both in-situ and remote sensing techniques to conduct comprehensive research on Mars samples, ensuring that they can be successfully returned and can yield meaningful scientific discoveries.
Humanity's journey to explore the Red Planet began 64 years ago with the former Soviet Union's 1960 Mars mission. To date, a total of seven countries and international organizations have conducted 47 Mars exploration treks, achieving flybys, orbital missions, landings, and surface rovers. However, the challenging task of returning samples from Mars remains unaccomplished.
And there's also the Tianwen-4 mission, which China is conducting feasibility study on – and which will aim for the exploration of Jupiter and its moons, followed by the arrival at Uranus, according to Wu.
Today, Boeing's Starliner spacecraft has completed its journey back to Earth – but the astronauts it was supposed to be carrying remain behind on the International Space Station.
The empty craft travelled in autonomous mode after undocking from the orbiting lab.
The capsule, which suffered technical problems after it launched with NASA's Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board, was deemed too risky to take the astronauts home.
They will instead return in a SpaceX Crew Dragon, but not until February – extending an eight-day stay on the ISS to eight months.
No comments:
Post a Comment