China plans to complete the world’s first AI-driven geological map of Mars by the end of 2028, scientists announced.

Hou Zengqian, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and chief scientist of the Tianwen-3 mission, unveiled the plan at a symposium in Beijing on September 28.

The new-generation map will cover the entire Martian surface. It will fuse data from China’s Zhurong rover with orbital imagery, radar, gravity and magnetic readings from Chinese, US and European Space Agency probes. Artificial intelligence will analyse the vast dataset, from mineral identification to tectonic structures.

The map will include Zhurong’s discoveries, including evidence that a vast ocean existed on Mars around 3.5 billion years ago and that short-lived floods may have occurred 1.6 billion years ago.

China also proposes a new Chinese system for dividing Martian geological time, replacing the current crater-density-based scale, and hopes it becomes an international standard. The project will support the Tianwen-3 sample-return mission.