China plans to send a rover to Mars to explore the Red Planet, a top space official announced Friday, the latest step in its ambitious space program.
Authorities approved the mission in January, said National Space Administration director Xu Dazhe during a press conference in Beijing.
The aim was to launch around 2020, he said, calling the timing "a challenge" that would be "a giant leap" for the country's space capabilities.
"What we want to achieve," he said, "is to orbit Mars, land, and deploy the rover in one mission, which will be quite difficult to achieve."
China is pouring billions into its space programme, mainly on projects to the moon, and is working to catch up with the U.S. and Europe, but has already been beaten to Mars by Asian neighbour India, which put a low-cost probe into orbit around the Red Planet in September 2014.
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Once on the Martian surface, Xu said, the Chinese rover could study the planet's soil, atmosphere, environment and look for traces of water.
"Researching these matters is really researching humanity itself and the origins of life," he said. "Only by completing this Mars probe mission can China say it has truly embarked on the exploration of deep space."
China has an ambitious, military-run, multi-billion-dollar space program that Beijing sees as symbolizing the country's progress and a marker of its rising global stature.