Chinas Tianwen-3-Mission soll bis etwa 2028 Marsproben zur Erde bringen und wird voraussichtlich die erste weltweit sein.

is this a good idea?

have they seen the movies?

That headline doesn’t pass a sanity check.

*”bring Mars samples to Earth by around 2028″*

either that or the word “around” is doing a lot of very heavy lifting.

First you got to get there, presumably with a mobile platform capable of sampling multiple sites. Unless it’s ready to fly **now**, the soonest it could launch is Q4 2026, arriving on Mars in mid 2027.

It would then have about 1 Earth year to zip around collecting samples before an Earth return window opens in late 2028 – bringing the samples to Earth by mid 2029 (which **is** around 2028).

The window after that would get the samples on Earth toward the end of 2031 – not really around 2028.

edit: according to info **not** in the article, the launches are planned for 2028, not the sample return. The return would occur in 2031.

Posting Chinese state media’s English site made for propaganda, huh?