BEIJING, April 24 (Xinhua) — The following is a summary of published science and technology news of China.

MARS IMAGES

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences on Monday jointly released a series of global images of Mars obtained during China’s first Mars exploration mission.

The series of colored images were released at the launch event of the Space Day of China held in Hefei, capital city of east China’s Anhui Province.

Processed in accordance with mapping standards with a spatial resolution of 76 meters, the images include the orthographic projection of the eastern and western hemispheres of Mars, the Robinson projection of Mars, and the Mercator projection plus an azimuthal projection of the planet.

ASTEROID SAMPLE

China plans to launch the Tianwen-2 mission around 2025 to collect samples from a near-Earth asteroid and explore a comet, a senior space expert said Monday.

The main goal of the Tianwen-2 mission is to send a probe to a near-Earth asteroid coded 2016HO3 to retrieve samples, Zhang Rongqiao, the chief designer of China’s planetary exploration program and chief designer of the Tianwen-2 mission, told the media on the country’s Space Day that falls on April 24.

“If successful, it would be China’s first samples collected from interplanetary space,” Zhang said, adding that a spacecraft will be sent to fly around and then land on the asteroid to collect the samples.

IP PROTECTION

China has granted 798,000 invention patents in 2022, with 9.4 high-value invention patents for every 10,000 people, the country’s top intellectual property (IP) regulator said Monday.

The review period for invention patents was shortened to 16.5 months, and the review period for trademark registrations averaged 4 months, Shen Changyu, head of the China National Intellectual Property Administration, told a press conference.

China saw 70,000 international applications filed under the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)’s Patent Cooperation Treaty in 2022 and the country rose to the 11th position on the Global Innovation Index 2022 released by WIPO, according to Shen.