According to a senior space scientist at the China Academy of Space Technology, China is planning to conduct at least one asteroid exploration mission before 2025.
"The asteroid mission will be carried out after the country's first Mars expedition in 2020 and before 2025," said Ye Peijian, a leading scientist on deep-space exploration at the China Academy of Space Technology.
He added: "The detailed schedule and the target asteroid have yet to be determined, but we are working on them. We want to explore asteroids because their resources will be important to mankind's development in the future."
Ye said that China has decided to send a probe to Mars to take samples and return to Earth around 2030. He also said that Chinese scientists are currently conducting preliminary research on a Jupiter mission.
According to a published white paper regarding China's future space activities, the China National Space Administration said that it would begin a feasibility study and research on key technology for explorations of Jupiter and asteroids from 2017 to 2021.
The administration said that the China deep-space expeditions will be used to help explore the origin and the evolution of the solar system. They will also be used to explore the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
Ji Jianghui, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, said: "Chinese scientists' long-term plans are to fly a probe past an asteroid; to fly side by side with an asteroid for a period; to land on a third one to conduct sampling analysis on the surface."
Currently, only the United States, Japan, and the European States Agency have carried out asteroid exploration missions.
In Feb. 1996, the U.S. Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous was launched. It is the world's first dedicated asteroid probe. Japan's Hayabusa became the first spacecraft to land and return from an asteroid in 2006.