China’s Tianwen-2 Space Probe Has Rendezvoused With Earth’s Quasi-Moon

The China National Space Administration’s asteroid probe Tianwen-2 successfully reached the asteroid Kamo’oalewa, which orbits the Sun successful a way astir identical to Earth’s.

After undergoing aggregate orbital adjustments successful heavy space, it archetypal detected Kamo’oalewa connected June 6, 2026. On July 2, it successfully captured the first-ever images of Kamo’oalewa from a region of astir 20 kilometers. This accomplishment comes astatine the extremity of a 400 time travel covering a region of astir 1 cardinal kilometers.

Kamo’oalewa is the astir unchangeable of Earth’s known quasi-satellites, and due to the fact that it orbits the Sun successful near-synchronous question with Earth, it is considered a comparatively accessible celestial body.

But landing connected the asteroid—let unsocial gathering samples—will beryllium a challenge. Kamo’oalewa has an mean diameter of lone astir 41 meters and rotates astatine precocious speed. This means the spacecraft indispensable execute unchangeable interaction and cod samples wrong a constricted timeframe. If it manages to stitchery samples, it volition past merchandise them successful a capsule during an Earth flyby successful November 2027.

Tianwen-2 is equipped with aggregate cameras with antithetic focal lengths. In summation to switching betwixt a narrow-field-of-view camera and a wide-field-of-view camera depending connected the situation, it besides features a detachable camera that volition beryllium utilized during illustration collection. Since the probe’s predisposition indispensable beryllium finely adjusted erstwhile capturing images, seizing these constricted windows of accidental is an highly hard task. Tianwen-2 plans to behaviour much elaborate technological observations of Kamo’oalewa’s shape, worldly composition, and interior structure.

If this ngo is successful, it volition people different accomplishment successful asteroid illustration return, pursuing Japan’s Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 missions—the archetypal to instrumentality asteroid samples to Earth—and NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission. Material from tiny celestial bodies orbiting adjacent Earth could supply 1 of the fewer clues to knowing the enactment of the star system, including Kamo’oalewa.

“It is highly apt to incorporate primordial accusation from the aboriginal days of the star system’s formation, and it holds large technological worth for studying aboriginal worldly composition, enactment processes, and evolutionary history,” explains Han Siyuan, lawman manager of the Lunar and Space Exploration Engineering Center and spokesperson for the Tianwen-2 mission.

Researchers person antecedently theorized that Kamo’oalewa is simply a fragment of the Moon blown distant by an asteroid interaction millions of years agone has been wide accepted until recently. This is due to the fact that the spectrum of reflected airy intimately resembles that of silicate minerals recovered connected the Moon’s surface. Simulations besides backed the mentation up.

In May, though, an planetary probe team—including the Chinese Academy of Sciences— published a insubstantial that casts uncertainty connected this starring hypothesis. A reanalysis of disposable information recovered that the cardinal wavelength of the absorption band—the constituent wherever airy weakens astatine a circumstantial wavelength—matched the characteristics of LL chondrites (a benignant of meteorite with debased robust and metallic content).

The probe squad conducted an experimentation successful which they irradiated LL chondrite meteorite pulverization with a laser to simulate abstraction weathering caused by star upwind and micrometeorites. The results intimately matched observational information of Kamo’oalewa. The researchers posit that Kamo’oalewa apt migrated to the Earth’s vicinity from the Flora family—a radical of celestial bodies successful the asteroid belt.

If Tianwen-2 successfully completes its ngo to instrumentality samples and instrumentality to Earth, it volition apt assistance reply questions astir Kamo’oalewa's origins. But first, it has to scope the asteroid's surface.

This communicative primitively appeared in WIRED Japan and has been translated from Japanese.