[standardUser]

Do either China or the US have plans to attempt a Mars sample return? Does China have the rocket power to attempt such a mission? The US seems focused solely on the return moon missions, with any Mars mission presumably behind at least 5 more major Artemis missions that are scheduled through 2031.

[sinxccc]

Tianwen-3 is the Mars sample return mission of China, which is 2030 on the current plan. They do have the rocket to support the mission. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianwen-3

[dotnet00]

China as far I'm aware doesn't have any solid plans on the books yet. NASA has been working on planning out a Mars sample return for a few years now, part of the Perseverance rover's job is to collect samples, store them in canisters, and drop them for future retrieval. This ensures that the samples have a much lower risk of having been contaminated, if, say, they end up being retrieved by a crewed mission.

The issue has been that previous proposals have all been too complex and too expensive, eg, a second rover that has to retrieve the samples and then place them on a lander which has a rocket on-board, the rocket then launches back into orbit, where an orbiter picks up it up and brings it home.

They've recently started soliciting other ideas for a way it might be done from private industry. The most promising in my opinion being to use a Starship, so they would be able to send a large enough return rocket to not need an orbital rendezvous, significantly simplifying things. I doubt they're seriously proposing a crewed Starship sample retrieval just yet. Another neat proposal I've heard is to build on the success of the Ingenuity helicopter to have a bunch of similar helicopters go around picking up the samples instead of a rover.

[DaoVeles]

It is such a classic issue with space travel. One way trip is relatively easy, return trips are WAY more difficult because of the reasons listed.

China has a plan to get an orbiting probe to Neptune but nothing about returning Mars samples. Highlights the different scale of the problem.

[standardUser]

Excellent info, thank you. If you or anyone else have favorite news sources for keeping up on space programs, please share. I tend to get most of my space news from HN.

[dotnet00]

I usually just pick it up from X, following a couple of good, space focused journalists helps push most space news up to me.

Adding to the Mars Sample Return thing, apparently China just recently announced their intention to do it ~2030.

[perihelions]

It was just in the news recently, a NASA request for proposals:

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-exploring-alternative... ("NASA Exploring Alternative Mars Sample Return Methods")

The latest Mars rover has an (IMHO, purely performative) function for collecting samples that, in theory, could be retrieved for Earth return by a separate lander in the future—one that hasn't been budgeted or designed yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseverance_(rover)#Samples_c...

[pavel_lishin]

Yep, the latest NASA lander is dropping samples in containers meant to be picked up by a later mission: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-sets-path-to-return-m...

[jimbobthrowawy]

There's also a sample container inside the rover intended to be sent back. The cached samples exist so that more can be taken, and so it's still possible to get samples if the sample container in the rover fails to open for some reason.

The initial plan for retrieval involved Roscosmos and ESA, but that's been called off for now. So they need some new plans. My favourite part of their initial sample return plan was the decision to not use a parachute to land it on earth, since they couldn't be sure one wouldn't fail.

[empire_and_sun]

SpaceX

[standardUser]

That's right, I forget SpaceX is ultimately focused on Mars missions. I mostly hear about them now in relation to their role in the upcoming Moon missions.