This Chinese Spacecraft Is Traveling to One of Earth’s Quasi-Moons

The National China The space administration shared the first image of its Tianwen-2 probe, which is on the way to Kamo’oalewa, an almost earthly asteroid.

The image was captured by a camera on board the probe, which is currently more than 3 million kilometers from the earth, and shows one of its wings with its solar panels deployed. It is also the first overview that the CNSA offered its space probe, which was launched on May 29 on a long rocket of March 3 of the Xichang satellite launch center in Zeyuan Town, China. The design of Tianwen-2 panels is apparently similar to those of Lucy, Nasa Space probe that explores asteroids floating near Jupiter. These are used to respond to the requests for electricity required for the trip.

The mission of Tianwen-2 is to land on the surface of Kamo’oalewa, to collect samples and to return to earth. The spacecraft should land on the surface of the asteroid in July 2026. Before that, it will spend several months study Kamo’oalewa at a safety distance, to determine its sampling area, before carrying out landing maneuvers, a particularly difficult task given the low gravity of the asteroid.

Once the samples have been taken, Tianwen-2 will return to earth and send his samples to the surface in a capsule, before trying to use the gravity of the earth as a sling to go around 311p / Panstarrs, an asteroid in the unusual air beyond the March This has some of the characteristics of a comet, including visible tails. Tianwen-2 should carry out this mission until 2035.

The enigma of the Hawaiian quasi-moon

Kamo’oalewa is one of the seven known to the earth like-moon—Objects which seem in orbit around our planet, but which are not really linked to the earth, and are in fact asteroids which turn the sun in an orbit similar to that of the earth.

Discovered in 2016 by astronomers from the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii, Kamo’oalewa – whose name means “celestial object oscillating” in Hawaiian – is located about 4.65 million kilometers from our planet, 12 times further from the earth than the Moon. Kamo’oalewa is estimated at around 40 to 100 meters in diameter, maintained its current orbit for 100 years and will probably keep it for 300 others.

We hope that Tianwen-2 will be able to solve the mystery of the origin of Kamo’oalewa. A theory is that it is a piece of rock that has burst from the moon millions of years ago. The sampling mission will help several scientific surveys on the composition of rocky celestial bodies, as well as scientists of aid in search of indices on the formation of the solar system.

Evidence and modeling suggest that Kamo’oalewa has been orbit around the sun for millions of years, but with an unstable trajectory. A direct exploration of this asteroid could, moreover, develop knowledge on nearby celestial objects which could potentially constitute a threat to the earth.

This story originally appeared on Cable in Spanish and was translated from Spanish.