China’s first Mars exploration mission (HuoXing-1) has been named as ‘Tianwen-1’ meaning Heaven Inquiry. Tianwen-1 was launched on July 23, 2020. In this paper, the scientific objectives of earlier and current Mars exploration missions worldwide are reviewed, and the scientific objectives, payloads and preliminary scientific investigation plan of China’s first Mars exploration mission are introduced, and expected scientific achievements are analyzed.

To address questions about the multiple lunar nearside–farside dichotomies and to provide new insights into both the early impact history of the Solar System and the geological evolution of the Moon, the Chang’e-6 (CE-6) landing zone has been selected to lie within the lunar farside South Pole–Aitken (SPA) basin in the southern part of the Apollo basin (150–158° W, 41–45° S), a site that provides access to a diversity of SPA material. Here, we describe the geomorphology, geology and chronology of three candidate sampling sites within this zone that are likely to ensure safe landing and sampling. The geological characteristics indicate that CE-6 is expected to collect lunar farside SPA ejecta fragments, possible mantle material and young (roughly 2.40 Gyr-year-old) and/or old (roughly 3.43 Gyr-year-old) basaltic material, all of which will provide important guidance for future in situ farside sample collection and deepen our understanding of the evolution of the Moon.

As part of the Tianwen-1 mission, the Zhurong rover successfully touched down in southern Utopia Planitia on 15 May 2021. On the basis of the new sub-metre-resolution images from the High Resolution Imaging Camera on board the Tianwen-1 orbiter, we determined that the Zhurong rover landed at 109.925° E, 25.066° N at an elevation of −4,099.4 m. The landing site is near the highland–lowland boundary¹ and multiple suspected shorelines^2–7. Under the guidance of the remote sensing survey, the Zhurong rover is travelling south for specific in situ investigation. Supported by the six payloads on board the rover⁸, its initial key targets are rocks, rocky fields, transverse aeolian ridges and subsurface structures along the path. Extended investigation will aim at troughs and cones in the distance. A better understanding of the formation mechanisms of these targets may shed light on the historical volcanism and water/ice activities within the landing area, as well as the activities of the wind. These results may reveal the characteristics and evolution of the ancient Martian environment and advance the exploration of the habitability of ancient Mars.

The distribution range, time-varying characteristics, and sources of lunar water are still controversial. Here we show the Chang’E-5 in-situ spectral observations of lunar water under Earth’s magnetosphere shielding and relatively high temperatures. Our results show the hydroxyl contents of lunar soils in Chang’E-5 landing site are with a mean value of 28.5 ppm, which is on the weak end of lunar hydration features. This is consistent with the predictions from remote sensing and ground-based telescopic data. Laboratory analysis of the Chang’E-5 returned samples also provide critical clues to the possible sources of these hydroxyl contents. Much less agglutinate glass contents suggest a weak contribution of solar wind implantation. Besides, the apatite present in the samples can provide hydroxyl contents in the range of 0 to 179 ± 13 ppm, which shows compelling evidence that, the hydroxyl-containing apatite may be an important source for the excess hydroxyl observed at this young mare region.

Landing site selection is of fundamental importance for lunar landing mission and it is closely related to the scientific goals of the mission. According to the widely concerned lunar science goals and the landing site selection of the ongoing lunar missions; China has carried out the selection of landing site for a series of Chang’ E (CE) missions. Under this background, this paper firstly introduced the principles, process, method and result of landing site selection of China’s Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP), and then analyzed the support of the selected landing sites to the corresponding lunar research. This study also pointed out the outcomes that could possibly contribute to the key lunar questions on the basis of the selected landing sites of CE-4 and CE-5 such as deep material in South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin, lunar chronology, volcanic thermodynamics and geological structure evolution history of the Moon. Finally, this approach analyzed the development trend of China’s follow-up lunar landing missions, and suggested that the South Pole Region of the Moon could be the landing site of high priority for the future CE missions.