{"id":28605,"date":"2025-05-28T15:11:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T15:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=28605"},"modified":"2025-05-28T15:23:03","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T15:23:03","slug":"china-to-launch-tianwen-2-mission-to-capture-pieces-of-near-earth-asteroid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=28605","title":{"rendered":"China to Launch Tianwen-2 Mission to Capture Pieces of Near-Earth Asteroid"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The robotic Tianwen-2 spacecraft will collect samples from Kamo\u02bboalewa, which some scientists suspect is a fragment of the moon.<\/p>\n

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China has a space station<\/a> and, in just a few short years, has landed robots on the moon<\/a> and Mars<\/a>. This week the country\u2019s space agency is targeting new, far-flung destinations and setting off for an asteroid that could contain secrets that explain how Earth and the moon formed.<\/p>\n

The country\u2019s Tianwen-2 spacecraft is set to lift off<\/a> aboard a Long March 3B rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China some time on Thursday (it will be Wednesday in New York).<\/p>\n

After about a year<\/a>, the robotic mission will arrive at 469219 Kamo\u02bboalewa, a near-Earth asteroid. There, it will perilously try to scoop up some rocky matter, and then swing back around to Earth. A capsule filled with geologic treasure would then plunge toward the planet for retrieval by scientists in late 2027<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If Tianwen-2 pulls this off, China will become the third nation \u2014 after Japan and the United States \u2014 to retrieve pristine material from an asteroid.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAll Chinese planetary scientists are now finger-crossed for this historic mission,\u201d said Yuqi Qian<\/a>, a lunar geologist at the University of Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft also has a secondary target, an unusual comet that it could study as part of an extended mission.<\/p>\n

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The robotic Tianwen-2 spacecraft will collect samples from Kamo\u02bboalewa, which some scientists suspect is a fragment of the moon.China has a space station and, in just a few short years, has landed robots on the moon and Mars. This week the country\u2019s space agency is targeting new, far-flung destinations and setting off for an asteroid that could contain secrets that explain how Earth and the moon formed.The country\u2019s Tianwen-2 spacecraft is set to lift off aboard a Long March 3B rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China some time on Thursday (it will be Wednesday in New York).After about a year, the robotic mission will arrive at 469219 Kamo\u02bboalewa, a near-Earth asteroid. There, it will perilously try to scoop up some rocky matter, and then swing back around to Earth. A capsule filled with geologic treasure would then plunge toward the planet for retrieval by scientists in late 2027.If Tianwen-2 pulls this off, China will become the third nation \u2014 after Japan and the United States \u2014 to retrieve pristine material from an asteroid.\u201cAll Chinese planetary scientists are now finger-crossed for this historic mission,\u201d said Yuqi Qian, a lunar geologist at the University of Hong Kong.The spacecraft also has a secondary target, an unusual comet that it could study as part of an extended mission.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28607,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28605"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28608,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28605\/revisions\/28608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}