BEIJING: China's Tianwen 2 asteroid sampling spacecraft had been on its interplanetary itinerary for over 33 days as of Tuesday (July 1) morning, with the robotic probe being more than 12 million kilometres away from Earth, according to the China National Space Administration.
The administration said in a brief news release that the Tianwen 2 spacecraft is travelling in a transfer trajectory toward its destination, an asteroid called 2016 HO3, and had been in a good condition by that morning.
The administration also published two pictures taken by the spacecraft's narrow-field-of-view navigation sensor, showing Earth and the moon when it was about 590,000km away from our mother planet and the moon, respectively.
The Tianwen 2, representing China's first attempt to bring pristine asteroid materials back to Earth, was launched on May 29 by a Long March 3B carrier rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Southwest China's Sichuan province.
The mission's primary objective is to reach a small, near-Earth asteroid named 2016 HO3, which is between 40 to 100m wide, in the summer of 2026, where it will first study the celestial body up close using a suite of 11 instruments including cameras, spectrometers and radars, before deploying special devices to collect surface substances.
The asteroid, also known as 469219 Kamo'oalewa, orbits the sun, so it remains a constant companion of Earth. It is too distant to be considered a true satellite of Earth, but it is the best and most stable example to date of a quasi-satellite.
After the collection work is done, the Tianwen 2 probe is programmed to fly back to Earth's orbit to send a capsule containing the precious samples back to the ground. The samples will be distributed to scientists, who will examine their physical properties, chemical and mineralogical content and isotopic composition, contributing to studies on the formation and evolution of asteroids and the early solar system.
Delivering samples to Earth will not be the end of the mission. The spacecraft will then enter the second phase of its mission: flying toward a main-belt comet called 311P to make a remote-sensing survey and transmit the data back to Earth for scientific research, according to the CNSA.
The Tianwen 2 mission is expected to yield groundbreaking discoveries and expand humanity's understanding of small celestial bodies inside the solar system and our mother planet, scientists said. - China Daily/ANN
