Chinese first woman astronaut Liu Yang (L) together with her two male colleagues, Jing Haipeng (C) and Liu Wang (R) wave as they areintroduced during a press conference at the Jiuquan space base, north China’s Gansu province on June 15, 2012.

In a story published by state news network China Daily, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation announced plans to send astronauts to the surface of Mars.

“Sending astronauts there will give man better opportunities to look for traces of life on Mars,” Pang Zhihao, a space technology researcher in Beijing told China Daily. “There are theories that Mars was very similar to Earth in terms of environment billions of years ago.”

According to the statement, it marks “the first time that China’s space industry has publicly unveiled a plan for manned missions to the red planet.”