Curiosity rover took selfies of its work on Mars in April and May. Photo / Nasa
Sovereignty in outer space is always a tricky subject, but out of all the lifeless rocks in the Solar System it was safe to say Mars was more American than most: every robot that ever crawled successfully on the planet's surface was made in the United States. But maybe not
for much longer.
China has announced it is planning to send a rover to Mars by 2020 and bring back samples from the Red Planet just 10 years later.
Ouyang Ziyuan, the Chinese scientist who oversaw the country's successful moon rover mission last December, said this would be just the first step in China's plans to explore the Solar System - with further plans to send probes to the Sun.
Scott Pace, formerly of Nasa and director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, told the Independent that China's plans were "ambitious but not impossible", adding that despite their success on the Moon, Mars is "much, much more difficult to reach and operate on".
Of the seven rovers so far sent to Mars, only the four US missions have been successful.
