Tianwen-1 and Zhurong

What is Tianwen-1?

Tianwen-1 is China’s first independent Mars mission: an orbiterOrbiterAn orbiter circles Mars without landing, studying the planet from above — and many also relay rover data back to Earth.More in the glossary, a landerLanderA lander touches down on Mars and works from one spot, unlike a rover, which drives.More in the glossary and a roverRoverA rover is a robot vehicle that drives across Mars, following plans its team on Earth sends ahead of each drive.More in the glossary named Zhurong, launched together in 2020.[2][4] A Long March 5, then China’s largest rocket, lifted the spacecraft of about 5 metric tons (11,000 lb) from the Wenchang launch site on Hainan island at 12:41 Beijing time (04:41 UTC) on Jul 23, 2020.[1] The name means “Questions to Heaven,” the title of a poem by Qu Yuan, who lived about 340 to 278 BC.[1][5]

China set out to orbit Mars, land and drive a rover in one mission.[1] CNSA says Tianwen-1 was the first Mars mission to do all three with a single spacecraft. It also made China the second country, after the United States, to land and operate a rover on Mars.[6][7][5]

CNSA figures from its English site and as reported by Xinhua, as of the dates shown. The sol count is CGTN’s.[2][3][8][12][14][15][17]

How did Tianwen-1 land on Mars?

After about three months in orbit studying the landing area, Tianwen-1 dropped a capsule that used a heat shield, a parachute and rocket engines to set Zhurong down on May 14, 2021 (UTC).[2][3] The spacecraft had entered Mars orbit on Feb 10, 2021, and moved into a parking orbit on Feb 24 to examine the landing site.[2][3]

On landing day the capsule separated from the orbiter, entered the atmosphere about 125 km (78 mi) up and took about nine minutes to come down. It hovered about 100 m (330 ft) above the ground to check for rocks, then touched down at 07:18 Beijing time on May 15, which was 23:18 UTC on May 14.[3][9] It had to land on its own: Earth was about 320 million km (200 million mi) away, too far for controllers to steer it in real time.[3]

The site is in the south of Utopia Planitia, a vast plain in Mars’s northern hemisphere, at about 25.07°N, 109.93°E.[5][9] CNSA said it was chosen for its safe terrain and weather, and because it was “highly likely to have been part of an ancient Martian ocean.”[3]

What is the Zhurong rover?

Zhurong is China’s first Mars rover: a six-wheeled, solar-powered robot that weighs about 240 kg (529 lb) and stands 1.85 m (6 ft) tall.[3][4] It is named after the god of fire in Chinese mythology, a nod to Huoxing, the Chinese name for Mars, which means “planet of fire.”[4] Its six science instruments were a terrain camera, a multispectral camera, a ground-penetrating radar, a detector for the makeup of rocks and soil, a magnetic field detector and a weather station.[3][4]

Zhurong rolled off its landing platform on May 22, 2021, and CNSA released its first pictures, including a selfie with the lander, on Jun 11.[8][9] It was built to work for at least 90 solsSolA sol is a day on Mars — 24 h 39 min 35 s, about 40 minutes longer than ours — and rovers count them from the day they land.More in the glossary, about three months, and met that goal on Aug 15, 2021. It then kept driving south, toward what CNSA called an ancient coastal area.[5][6][8] By May 5, 2022, it had worked for 347 sols and driven 1,921 m (about 1.2 mi).[8]

In November 2021, ESA’s Mars Express orbiter tested relaying Zhurong’s data to Earth, ending with a successful test on Nov 20.[10] Our guide to every Mars rover compares Zhurong with NASA’s rovers.

What did Zhurong find?

Signs that water shaped its landing site, some of it more recently than scientists expected, and layers buried tens of meters down.[18][19][23] Each is its authors’ interpretation, and some are debated.

• 01Water-altered rocks. Using Zhurong’s infrared measurements, a team found hydrated sulfate and silica minerals in bright rocks near the landing site. They wrote that the rocks point to formation with “substantial liquid water,” from rising groundwater or melting underground ice, a sign of more water activity in Mars’s recent geological past than previously thought (Science Advances, May 2022).[19]
• 02About 70 m of layers underground. Zhurong’s radar mapped the ground under about 1,171 m (3,842 ft) of its route: less than 10 m (33 ft) of loose soil over a layered structure about 70 m (230 ft) thick. The team read it as deposits from repeated floods. It found no direct sign of liquid water within the radar’s reach, but couldn’t rule out salty ice (Nature, September 2022).[18]
• 03Crusts on dunes. Crusts, cracks and bright ridges on salt-rich dunes formed, the team inferred, within roughly the last 400,000 to 1.4 million years. The team’s most likely explanation is salty water from melted frost or snow (Science Advances, April 2023).[20]
• 04Buried polygons. Below about 35 m (115 ft), the radar picked out 16 wedge shapes within about 1.2 km (0.75 mi). The authors read them as buried polygonal ground, possibly made by freezing and thawing, a sign of big climate swings in Mars’s past (Nature Astronomy, November 2023).[21]
• 05A buried coastline? A buried stack of layers 10 to 35 m (33 to 115 ft) thick, all tilting the same way at 6° to 20° along a 1.3 km (0.8 mi) stretch, looks like deposits at the edge of a large body of water. The authors note that an ancient ocean in Mars’s northern plains is still a controversial idea, but say their findings support it (PNAS, February 2025).[22]
• 06Gypsum crystals. In July 2026 a team reported crystal shapes on the scale of 10 cm (4 in), in a thin surface layer, that point to selenite, a form of gypsum. They read it as an evaporite, a mineral that can only form from water at the surface, on ground about 760 million years old (Nature Astronomy, July 2026).[23]

Our page on water on Mars puts these finds alongside what NASA’s rovers have found.

What happened to China’s Mars rover?

Zhurong went into planned hibernation on May 18, 2022, to ride out a dust storm and the Martian winter, and it did not wake up when spring came.[11][12] In a statement carried by Xinhua, CNSA said pictures from the Tianwen-1 orbiter, and power data from the rover’s solar panels, showed an intense dust storm over Zhurong’s area. Daytime temperatures there could fall below −20 °C (−4 °F), and nights below −100 °C (−148 °F). CNSA expected it to wake in December 2022.[11] The rover was designed to shut down in extreme conditions and switch itself back on when it was safe.[3]

In April 2023, Zhang Rongqiao, chief designer of China’s Mars exploration program, said Zhurong needed two things at once to wake: a cabin warmer than −15 °C (5 °F), and enough sunlight to generate 140 watts, its minimum daily need. “Based on our analysis, the most likely possibility is that an unpredictable accumulation of Martian dust has led to a decrease in the power generation capacity, which is insufficient to wake it up,” he told China Media Group, CGTN reported.[12]

Pictures from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showed that the rover had not moved between Sep 8, 2022 and Feb 7, 2023.[13] Zhurong worked for 358 sols, almost four times its design life, CGTN reported.[12] We have found no announcement from China that the rover’s mission is over, so our mission data lists Zhurong as dormant.

What is the Tianwen-1 orbiter doing now?

It is still studying Mars: in April 2026 a CNSA official said Tianwen-1 had continued global and regional surveys of the planet, and that 3.5 terabytes of its science data were open to scientists worldwide, Xinhua reported.[17] It carries seven instruments: two cameras, a subsurface radar, a mineral spectrometer, a magnetometer and two particle analyzers.[4] It was built to last one Mars year, about 687 Earth days, and passed that mark on Dec 29, 2022, Xinhua reported.[5][14]

For nearly six months after the landing, the orbiter relayed Zhurong’s data from an orbit that took 8.2 hours per lap. It then moved to an orbit for mapping the whole planet, while still relaying for the rover.[5][14][7] It photographed Zhurong and its landing platform from orbit on Jun 2, 2021.[5] From 14,757 of its pictures, taken from November 2021 to July 2022, CNSA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences made China’s first global color images of Mars, at 76 m (250 ft) per pixel, released on Apr 24, 2023.[15]

On Oct 3, 2025, its high-resolution camera photographed the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS from about 30 million km (19 million mi) away.[16] CNSA said in April 2026 that China’s next Mars mission, Tianwen-3, aims to bring Martian samples to Earth around 2031.[25]

Mission timeline

1. Jul 23, 2020Launches on a Long March 5 from Wenchang.[1][24]
2. Feb 10, 2021Enters orbit around Mars.[3][14]
3. Feb 24, 2021Moves into a parking orbit to survey the landing site.[2]
4. Apr 24, 2021The rover is named Zhurong.[4]
5. May 14, 2021Lands in southern Utopia Planitia (May 15 in Beijing).[3][9]
6. May 22, 2021Zhurong drives onto the surface.[8][9]
7. Aug 15, 2021Zhurong completes its planned 90 sols.[8]
8. Nov 20, 2021ESA’s Mars Express relays Zhurong’s data in a successful test.[10]
9. May 18, 2022Zhurong goes into hibernation, having driven 1,921 m.[8][11][15]
10. Dec 29, 2022The orbiter completes one Mars year in orbit, its design life.[5][14]
11. Apr 24, 2023China releases global color images of Mars from the orbiter.[15]
12. Apr 25, 2023China’s chief Mars designer says dust most likely kept Zhurong from waking.[12]
13. Oct 3, 2025The orbiter photographs the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS.[16]
14. Apr 17, 2026CNSA says the orbiter has kept surveying Mars and 3.5 TB of its data are public.[17]

Sources

1. China National Space Administration (CNSA) — Tianwen-1: China successfully launches probe in first Mars mission (Jul 23, 2020)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
2. China National Space Administration (CNSA) — Tianwen 1 probe enters preset parking orbit (Feb 24, 2021)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
3. China National Space Administration (CNSA) — Probe makes historic landing on Mars (May 17, 2021)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
4. China National Space Administration (CNSA) — Update: China Focus: China’s first Mars rover named Zhurong (Apr 25, 2021, from Xinhua)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
5. China National Space Administration (CNSA) — New images of Mars taken by the Tianwen-1 probe have been released (Jun 7, 2021)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
6. China National Space Administration (CNSA) — Mars rover continues scientific mission (Aug 18, 2021)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
7. China National Space Administration (CNSA) — Trekking 100 days on Mars, Zhurong drives further south with efficiency (Aug 31, 2021)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
8. China National Space Administration (CNSA) — Tianwen-1 mission marks 1st year on Mars (May 16, 2022)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
9. NASA GISS — Mars24: landers and roversPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
10. ESA — Mars Express relays data from ZhurongPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
11. Xinhua — China’s Zhurong rover switches to dormant mode in severe Martian dust stormSecondary · checked Oct 6, 2026
12. CGTN — Chief Designer: China’s Mars rover Zhurong needs two conditions to wake upSecondary · checked Oct 6, 2026
13. HiRISE, University of Arizona — Observing the Surface in the Region of the Zhurong Rover (ESP_077511_2055)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
14. Xinhua — Tianwen-1 marks 2 years in Martian orbitSecondary · checked Oct 6, 2026
15. China National Space Administration (CNSA) — China unveils first global panoramic images of Mars (Apr 24, 2023, from China Daily)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
16. China National Space Administration (CNSA) — Tianwen-1 successfully observes interstellar object 3I/ATLAS (Nov 6, 2025, in Chinese)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
17. Xinhua — China to carry out intensive space missions in 2026: CNSASecondary · checked Oct 6, 2026
18. Nature — Layered subsurface in Utopia Basin of Mars revealed by Zhurong rover radar (Li et al., Nature, 2022)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
19. Science Advances — Zhurong reveals recent aqueous activities in Utopia Planitia, Mars (Liu et al., Science Advances, 2022)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
20. Science Advances — Modern water at low latitudes on Mars: Potential evidence from dune surfaces (Qin et al., Science Advances, 2023)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
21. Nature Astronomy — Buried palaeo-polygonal terrain detected underneath Utopia Planitia on Mars by the Zhurong radar (Zhang et al., Nature Astronomy, 2024)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
22. PNAS — Ancient ocean coastal deposits imaged on Mars (Li et al., PNAS, 2025)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
23. Nature Astronomy — Primary evaporite in southern Utopia Planitia on Mars from Zhurong rover observations (Liu et al., Nature Astronomy, 2026)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026
24. NASA NSSDCA — Chronology of Mars ExplorationPrimary · checked Oct 6, 2026
25. China National Space Administration (CNSA) — China celebrates Space Day with a sneak peek at Tianwen 3’s tech (Apr 24, 2026, from China Daily)Primary · checked Oct 6, 2026