China is developing a new-generation geologic map of Mars to be completed by the end of 2028. Led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the project aims to reconstruct the planet’s watery history and establish an independent Chinese system for dividing Martian geologic time, potentially shifting international scientific consensus.
This isn’t just about drawing lines on a red sphere.
Replacing Crater Density with Absolute Chronology
For decades, the global community has relied on a timeline splitting Mars into the Noachian, Hesperian, and Amazonian periods. The problem? These are defined by the density of visible craters. It is a relative measurement—a proxy for age—rather than a set of absolute dates.
Hou Zengqian, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and chief scientist of the Tianwen-3 Mars sample-return mission, intends to change that. China is proposing a new scheme for dividing Martian geologic time based on more precise data. The goal, as stated by Hou, is to make this Chinese scheme an international consensus.
Integrating Zhurong’s Water Findings into a Global Database
The raw data fueling this map comes from a fusion of orbital and ground-based sources. Central to this is the Zhurong rover, which landed in 2021 as part of the Tianwen-1 mission. Zhurong provided the critical evidence needed to fill gaps in the climate evolution chain, specifically identifying a vast ancient ocean that existed roughly 3.5 billion years ago and short-lived floods occurring around 1.6 billion years ago.
To build the map, the project isn’t working in a vacuum. It will utilize Tianwen-1 data supplemented by probe data from the U.S. and the European Space Agency (ESA). This creates a multi-field global database coupling imagery, spectra, radar, gravity, and magnetic readings.
The deliverables are precise:
- A 1:5 million-scale global Martian geologic map.
- A high-resolution 1:50,000-scale map of the landing area.
- A series of thematic atlases.
Embedding Geological Expertise into LLMs and Rule Engines
The most technically aggressive aspect of this project is the “intelligent” nature of the map.
Geologists’ expertise is being embedded into large models via rule engines. To handle the scale of the data, the team is employing multi-scale attention techniques. This allows the system to perform progressive feature extraction, moving directly from the identification of a single mineral at a local level to the division of global tectonic units.
This “intelligent geologic map” is designed as a template. Once the pipeline is validated on Mars, the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences plans to apply the same framework to the Moon, Venus, and various asteroids.
The Strategic Pipeline to Tianwen-3
This mapping project is not an academic exercise; it is a reconnaissance mission for hardware. According to the Economic Observation Network, these achievements serve as the scientific preparation for the Tianwen-3 mission, which focuses on sample return.
Director Yang Zhiming of the Institute of Geology noted that this work provides the scientific grounding to decide where to go, what to explore, and why.
