China progresses plans for Mars sample return, asteroid flyby and more launch sites

8 min read · reported by NASASpaceflight

As China integrates crewed and robotic missions to further its lunar exploration program, it is also advancing plans to return the first samples collected from Mars. Closer to Earth, a student-led spacecraft is taking shape for a 2029 flyby of the near-Earth asteroid Apophis.

While investigating recent flight failures, China plans to further expand its spaceports, including support for an increase in sea launches.

China’s Tianwen-3 Mars Sample Return mission has entered the prototype development phase, with a number of scientific preparations underway, according to the project’s Chief Scientist and Chinese Academy of Sciences academician, Hou Zengqian.

The Tianwen-3 mission is currently targeting a 2028 launch aboard two Chang Zheng 5 vehicles, conducting sampling on the surface in 2030 and returning samples to Earth around 2031. The mission’s primary scientific goal is to search for traces of past life on Mars and could become the world’s first Mars sample return mission.

The project poses various technical challenges as well as scientific ones, as the team considers where and how to sample, methods of transferring the samples, and ensuring they do not become contaminated. The overall approach is reminiscent of NASA’s Mars Sample Return architecture shared in 2022, albeit without a rover pre-collecting samples from a wider range of locations.

A lander will drill for samples and load them into an onboard small launcher that will carry them to orbit. A robotic arm on the awaiting orbiter would then retrieve the samples and load them into a return capsule that will separate and return them to Earth.

The process is far more daunting than lunar sampling, Hou noted, not least because Mars is significantly further away. The project aims to drill two meters into the surface to collect subsurface samples, which will be extremely difficult. Sampling from this depth better preserves the primordial information and minimizes impacts from surface radiation, oxidation and weathering on potential biosignatures.

Eight candidate landing sites have been selected, considering factors such as geological age, water history, habitability and the potential for obtaining around 500 grams of high-value scientific samples.

The project will benefit from the wealth of data collected by the Tianwen-1 orbiter over the last five years. The imagery from this orbiter is being collated into a global geological map of the red planet, similar to the maps of the Moon created from Chang’e imagery. This 1:5,000,000-scale map will combine high-resolution imagery, spectroscopy and other multimodal information and is expected to be completed before the end of 2028.

Samples will initially be analyzed in the Deep Space Exploration Laboratory in Anhui province, and later distributed more widely to scientists.

Chinese lunar exploration program

China officially handed over samples from the Chang’e 6 mission to the lunar far side to the United Nations this month. The samples, collected in June 2024, will be exhibited on permanent display at the United Nations offices in Vienna.

The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) is now additionally overseeing uncrewed robotic lunar missions previously managed by the China National Space Administration (CNSA), starting with the Chang’e 7 mission. Personnel, resources, and knowledge are now being pooled together to benefit the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program.

The planned Chang’e 7 launch was delayed in August, following unfavorable local weather and, with unusually restrictive timing constraints, could no longer fly in its planned 2026 window. Its solar-powered lander and rover must reach the lunar south pole during a period of prolonged sunlight, while the low angle of the Sun must also provide suitable illumination for navigation and landing. Missing the tightly linked launch and landing windows has now pushed the mission to no earlier than early 2027, rather than simply delaying it by a few days or weeks.

Learnings and hardware from the Chang’e missions will inform the design of future cargo landers, set to fly between 2031 and 2035. Unconfirmed rumors circulated this month around Chang’e 8 being cancelled, or its instruments being diverted to other earlier lunar missions, following comments by one team at September’s Europlanet Science Congress.

The mission had been designed to explore in-situ resource utilization near the lunar south pole, including experiments intended to demonstrate technologies for extracting and using local resources, such as turning lunar regolith into useful construction materials. It would work alongside Chang’e 7 to lay the groundwork for China’s planned International Lunar Research Station.

The mission attracted extensive international participation. CNSA selected 10 collaborative projects involving 11 countries and regions, with 200 kg of payload capacity made available to overseas partners. These include Pakistan’s first lunar rover and a Turkish exploration rover, alongside instruments and experiments from Russia, Italy, Thailand, Bahrain, Egypt, and Hong Kong – each of which has previously partnered on Chang’e missions. They are joined by experiments from Iran, South Africa, and Peru. Chang’e 8 is currently officially scheduled for launch around 2029, targeting the Leibnitz-Beta Plateau near the lunar south pole.

Elsewhere, Tsinghua University’s Student-led Threatening Asteroid Reconnaissance of Tsinghua (START) mission to intercept asteroid Apophis has now moved from review to the build stage. The 300 kg craft will launch in early 2028 aboard a ZhuQue-3, performing initial checkouts in LEO before raising its orbit to 31,600 km using low-cost solar electric propulsion.

The craft will perform a high-speed (8.74 km/s) flyby of the asteroid in April 2029 during its closest encounter with Earth, passing within 7 km of its target. Using high-cadence downlinks, imagery and data are expected to be returned within seven days.

With Falcon 9 Starlink missions no longer flying from Florida, China launched more times than the Space Coast over the 30 days leading up to the publication of this article in mid-September. The count was still three short of the US total of 13 launches. As an increasing number of launch providers prepare newer vehicles for flight, or ramp up their cadence, China is planning even more launch infrastructure.

The commercial spaceport in Wenchang is moving into a third phase of development, now that its third and fourth pads are near completion. The Hainan International Commercial Aerospace Launch Company (HICAL), which manages the site, plans a further four universal pads at the site during this next expansion. Commercial pads 3 and 4 could potentially host a launch before the year is out.

Work is also nearing completion on a third launch complex (LC-301) at the Wenchang Space Launch Site, with the shutter doors now attached to the two nearby vehicle assembly buildings. The pair will eventually house the two Chang Zheng 10 vehicles that will launch China’s crewed Mengzhou capsule and Lanyue lander for a lunar landing attempt before the end of the decade. While crew access arms are yet to be installed at LC-301, the pad is first expected to host the maiden launch of the single-core Chang Zheng 10A next year.

Meanwhile, iSpace is getting ready to start expanding its launch vehicle processing facilities at Wenchang next month, where it will work further on the company’s partially reusable Shuang Quxian-3 (Hyperbola-3).

HICAL is additionally planning to have completed the first of two planned droneships for offshore recovery of first stages by the end of the year. Capable of operating in ‘sea state 4’ (waves between 1.25 and 2.5 meters), the vessel is capable of 30 to 40 recovery missions per year with a roughly seven-day recovery cycle.

Increase in sea launches

China’s first sea launch took place over seven years ago in June 2019, when a Chang Zheng 11 (CZ-11) carried seven satellites to orbit from the Yellow Sea. Since then, 28 sea launches have been conducted, using the CZ-11 alongside CASC’s Jielong-3, Galactic Energy’s Gushenxing 1 (Ceres-1S) and Orienspace’s Yinli-1 (Gravity-1), which most recently launched on Sept. 16.

CAS Space now plans to perform the first sea-launch of its Lijian-1 (Kinetica-1) after trials in August aboard the Dongfang Hangtiangang ship in the South China Sea. The company envisages sea-launches offering customers more flexible target orbits, complementing monthly sun-synchronous missions from the inland Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

Construction began in late August to build a commercial sea spaceport in the Minhang District of Shanghai. Construction is estimated to take seven months, with sizeable vehicle storage and integration buildings alongside the Huangpu River. Vehicles would be transported from the spaceport using either the river or nearby canals to an offshore launch site. This new Shanghai Spaceport will begin sea launches in 2027, complementing the established Haiyang Oriental Spaceport in Shandong province, while another is being considered to the south in Guangdong.

Following Series B financing, Space Epoch’s Yuanxingzhe-1 reportedly targets a maiden flight before the end of the year, with commercial launches starting in 2027. Constructed in stainless steel, the vehicle measures 66 m high and 4.2 m in diameter. The company claims it could carry 14,000 kg to low-Earth orbit, 9,000 kg to a 1,100 km orbit when expended, and 7,000 kg when recovered.

Space Epoch successfully flew a vertical takeoff and vertical landing (VTVL) test with a prototype in May at the Oriental Spaceport in Shandong. The demonstration used a nearly 27 m test vehicle, which reached around 2.5 km altitude and was successfully recovered from the sea after a controlled splashdown for analysis. The forthcoming maiden flight would again target a controlled splashdown, which will inform future plans for catching later boosters using a recovery platform.

Galactic Energy showed plans earlier in the year to catch its Zhishenxing-2 (Pallas-2) using a tower with catch arms at sea. The company released new renders of that vehicle in single- and triple-core configurations this month, both featuring an interstage that implies it would utilize hot staging.

The company recently completed long-duration testing of its new-generation 100-ton-class Cangqiong-90 (CQ-90) engine. The CQ-90 burns liquid kerosene and oxygen using the gas generator cycle, and would power this new vehicle.

The company successfully conducted the maiden launch of its Zhishenxing-1 (Pallas-1) on Sept. 1 from a dedicated launch pad at Jiuquan. Galactic Energy intends to land and recover the boosters on future missions, once development has been completed on a throttleable version of the Cangqiong-50 engine.

A Chang Zheng 7A exploded just over a minute after launching from Wenchang in mid-August, carrying the ChinaSat 4B satellite. This, along with the fragmentation of a second Chang Zheng 6C second stage in orbit and other program delays, prompted the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) to issue a declaration that it faced a “severe quality situation” across its programs and that it has ordered more rigorous investigations and tighter quality control.

Meanwhile, Space Pioneer’s review of the Tianlong-3 failure in April traced the anomaly to a liquid oxygen leak on the vehicle’s first stage, where a fire then developed. While both stages separated, this occurred at around 40 km in altitude rather than the intended 70 km. The second stage lost control shortly after ignition, ending the mission.

Nonetheless, the flight verified the majority of hardware items the company set out to test, it reported. The findings are being applied to a second vehicle, which could potentially launch in the final quarter of this year.

Reported by NASASpaceflight. Reproduced unedited by Everything Space. View the original →