China is set to launch its Tianwen-2 mission:
China is set to launch its Tianwen-2 mission, which aims to survey and sample the near-Earth asteroid 469219 Kamo‘oalewa.
- Tianwen-2 Mission launch Vehicle : Long March 3B rocket.
- Launch Site: Xichang Satellite Launch Centre, Sichuan Province, China.
- Agency: China National Space Administration (CNSA).
- Objective is Survey and sample asteroid Kamo’oalewa, then travel to the asteroid belt to study comet 311P/PANSTARRS.
- Kamo‘oalewa is a near-Earth asteroid discovered in 2016 by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Haleakalā, Hawaii.
- It belongs to a rare class called quasi-satellites of Earth, which orbit the Sun, but remain gravitationally influenced by Earth due to their close proximity.
- It follows a highly elliptical solar orbit and appears to alternate between leading and trailing Earth, giving the illusion of orbiting Earth.
- Kamo‘oalewa has been in its current orbit for ~100 years, and is expected to stay for another 300 years, though quasi-satellite orbits are inherently unstable over long timescales.
- Tianwen-2 will use the “touch-and-go” technique to collect samples a method also used by NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex and Japan’s Hayabusa2
- In this method, the spacecraft briefly hovers over the asteroid’s surface, where a robotic arm releases a projectile or gas burst to dislodge particles, which are captured in a chamber.
- A backup “anchor-and-attach” method may be used, where four robotic arms drill into the surface to retrieve subsurface material.
