Final preparations are under way for China to launch an uncrewed craft to visit both an asteroid and a comet, in the hope of learning more about the space rocks in our solar system.
The Tianwen-2 mission by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) will collect a 100-gram sample from the asteroid Kamo驶oalewa and return it to Earth. After dropping off the sample, the probe will use our planet鈥檚 gravity as a slingshot听to boost itself towards the comet 311P/PanSTARRS, which it will observe remotely.
The mission is due to launch from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province . It won鈥檛 be the first to return samples of asteroids to Earth, as both NASA鈥檚 OSIRIS-REx and JAXA鈥檚 Hayabusa missions have already done that. But it will be China鈥檚 first mission to an asteroid involving the return of a rock sample, and it is likely to be the first mission to a unique type of body called a quasi-satellite.
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Quasi-satellites like Kamo驶oalewa don鈥檛 strictly orbit Earth, but travel in a similar orbit to us around the sun, swinging elliptically around our planet as they do so. This unusual situation has led scientists to suspect that this particular one is a chunk of the moon ejected millions of years ago by an asteroid impact.
On the other hand, has an asteroid-like orbit 鈥� spinning around our sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter 鈥� but with an appearance more like a comet because it has tails. These are suspected of being bits of dust and rubble flung out from its spinning body.
The CNSA that 311P/PanSTARRS is a 鈥渓iving fossil鈥�, making it useful for studying the early material composition, formation process and evolutionary history of the solar system. And Tianwen-2 will provide scientists with a better understanding of both Kamo驶oalewa and 311P/PanSTARRS. However, the results won鈥檛 come quickly: the craft is due to reach 311P/PanSTARRS in 2034, and even the Kamo驶oalewa sample is expected to return to Earth only in late 2027.
Exactly how much the CNSA will share about the discoveries is also unclear. at the University of Birmingham, UK, says the mission鈥檚 outline is known, and one likely goal is to study the differences between the asteroid and the comet to gain a deeper understanding of the range of bodies in our solar system, but precise details haven鈥檛 been forthcoming.
Alconcel鈥檚 previous experience working with the CNSA on the leads her to suspect that the agency will hold on to the resulting scientific data tightly. 鈥淚t was extremely difficult to negotiate [with the CNSA],鈥� says Alconcel.鈥┾�漁nce they kind of had some information from us, they were not very keen to reciprocate. There will not be a public repository of this data, I don鈥檛 think.鈥�
She says that the mission is daring, as Kamo驶oalewa is spinning, which will make landing harder. Navigation algorithms are likely to demand such powerful computers that images and sensor readings will be sent back to Earth for computation. 鈥淚f we were to always pick lovely, cooperative objects, we wouldn鈥檛 learn a lot,鈥� she says. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot that could potentially go wrong.鈥�
The CNSA didn鈥檛 respond to 快猫短视频鈥榮 request for interview.
