China's ambitious Tianwen-3 mission aims to return at least 500 grams of Martian material to Earth by 2031, challenging NASA's dominance in space exploration.

Companies in the space industry set up their displays for the Space Symposium at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs on Saturday, April 11, 2026. (The Gazette, Michael G. Seamans) When it landed on Mars ...

As stated in Chapter 8, the proper design and implementation of planetary protection measures will ultimately be critical to the overall success of martian sample-return missions. Mission success can ...

NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission was meant to bring pieces of the Red Planet back to Earth in a historic search for ancient life. But rising costs, technical complexity, and repeated delays have ...

China's mission to retrieve samples from Mars will advance to the flight model development phase within this year, Liu Jizhong, chief designer of the Tianwen 3 mission, said on Thursday. Building on ...

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced the Tianwen 3, a daring Mars sample return mission to launch in 2028 ...

A crescent of the northern hemisphere of Mars taken by Tianwen-1's medium-resolution camera in March 2021. Credit: CNSA/PEC ESPOO, Finland — China’s Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission is entering ...

Only companies that worked on the Mars Sample Return program need apply, narrowing the field to a handful of space industry heavyweights. NASA is looking for ways to improve the communications network ...

Japan's Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) spacecraft has arrived at the Tanegashima spaceport ahead of launch, which will kick off an audacious mission to bag samples from Mars' moon Phobos and deliver ...

Tianwen-3, China's first attempt to retrieve samples from another planet, is expected to mark a major leap in the country's deep-space capabilities, building on the success of its earlier Tianwen-1 ...