The China Nationwide House Administration has shared the primary picture from its Tianwen-2 probe, which is en path to Kamo‘oalewa, a near-Earth asteroid.
The picture was captured by a digicam onboard the probe, which is at present greater than 3 million kilometers from Earth, and exhibits one in all its wings with its photo voltaic panels deployed. It is usually the primary glimpse the CNSA has provided of its house probe, which launched on Could 29 on a Lengthy March 3B rocket from the Xichang Satellite tv for pc Launch Heart in Zeyuan City, China. The design of Tianwen-2’s panels is analogous in look to these on Lucy, NASA’s house probe that’s exploring asteroids floating close to Jupiter. These serve to satisfy the facility calls for required for the journey.
Tianwen-2’s mission is to land on the floor of Kamo‘oalewa, gather samples, and return to Earth. The spacecraft is scheduled to land on the asteroid’s floor in July 2026. Earlier than then, it would spend a number of months finding out Kamo‘oalewa from a secure distance, to find out its sampling space, earlier than continuing with touchdown maneuvers, a very tough activity given the asteroid’s low gravity.
As soon as the samples have been collected, Tianwen-2 will journey again to Earth and ship its samples right down to the floor in a capsule, earlier than then trying to make use of Earth’s gravity as a slingshot to go towards 311P/PanSTARRS, an unusual-looking asteroid past Mars that has among the traits of a comet, together with seen tails. Tianwen-2 is predicted to conduct this mission till 2035.
The Enigma of the Hawaiian Quasi-Moon
Kamo‘oalewa is one in all Earth’s seven identified quasi-moons—objects that seem like orbiting our planet, however which aren’t really gravitationally certain to Earth, and are literally asteroids circling the solar in an orbit just like Earth’s.
Found in 2016 by astronomers on the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii, Kamo‘oalewa—whose identify means “oscillating celestial object” in Hawaiian—is situated roughly 4.65 million kilometers from our planet, 12 instances additional away from Earth than the moon. Kamo‘oalewa is estimated to be roughly 40 to 100 meters in diameter, has maintained its present orbit for 100 years, and can in all probability keep it for 300 extra.
It’s hoped that Tianwen-2 can resolve the thriller of Kamo‘oalewa’s origin. One theory is that it’s a bit of rock that broke off from the moon hundreds of thousands of years in the past. The sampling mission will assist a number of scientific investigations into the composition of rocky celestial our bodies, in addition to help scientists within the seek for clues concerning the formation of the photo voltaic system.
Observational proof and modeling recommend that Kamo‘oalewa has been orbiting the solar for hundreds of thousands of years, albeit with an unstable trajectory. A direct exploration of this asteroid might, as well as, increase data about close by celestial objects that may probably pose a risk to Earth.
This story initially appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.
