Chinese state media says the mission aims ‘to shed light on the formation and evolution of asteroids’ and the Earth.
China has successfully launched a spacecraft as part of its first-ever mission to retrieve pristine asteroid samples, in what researchers have described as a “significant step” in Beijing’s ambitions for interplanetary exploration.
China’s Long March 3B rocket lifted off at about 1.31am local time (18:30 GMT) on Thursday from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in southwest China’s Sichuan province. It was carrying the Tianwen-2 spacecraft, a robotic probe that could make China the third nation to fetch pristine asteroid rocks.
Announcing the launch, Chinese state-run news outlets said the “spacecraft unfolded its solar panels smoothly”, and that the China National Space Administration (CNSA) had “declared the launch a success”.
Over the next year, Tianwen-2 will approach a small near-Earth asteroid some 10 million miles (16 million km) away, named “469219 Kamoʻoalewa”, also known as 2016HO3.
The spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at the asteroid, which researchers believe is potentially a fragment of the Moon, in July 2026. It will then shoot the capsule with rock samples back to Earth for a landing in November 2027.
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If successful, China would become only the third country to carry out such a mission after Japan first fetched samples from a small asteroid in 2010, followed by the United States in 2020.
The People’s Daily state-run newspaper described the mission’s purpose as an “endeavour to shed light on the formation and evolution of asteroids and the early solar system”.
The newspaper quoted Shan Zhongde, the head of the CNSA, as saying that the mission represented a “significant step in China’s new journey of interplanetary exploration”. He added that the mission was expected to yield “groundbreaking discoveries and expanding humanity’s knowledge of the cosmos”.
The mission has multiple goals over the “decade-long expedition”, according to Chinese state media, including “collecting samples from near-Earth asteroid 2016HO3” and “exploring the main-belt comet 311P”.
It will also aim to measure the “physical parameters of the two celestial targets”, including their “orbital dynamics, rotation, size, shape and thermal properties”.
The samples will be used to determine the “physical properties, chemical and mineral composition and structural characteristics” of asteroids, according to researchers working on the project.
As a quasi-satellite of Earth that has orbited the Sun in a synchronised path with the Earth for nearly a century, 2016HO3 has a diameter of between 120 feet (40 metres) and 300 feet (100 metres).
China has swiftly expanded its space programmes and embarked on several landmark missions in recent years, including landing robots on the far side of the Moon and collecting humankind’s first-ever samples from the area in June last year.
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China is also running its own Tiangong space station in orbit – the only operational space station other than the International Space Station (ISS) – after the US barred it from participating in the ISS.
In April, three crew members landed back in the country’s north after spending six months on board Tiangong in what was the longest-ever mission in space by Chinese astronauts.
Beijing has also invested heavily in planned crewed missions to the Moon that would see Chinese astronauts on the lunar surface by 2030.
The US has also stated its aim to put astronauts back on the Moon for the first time since 1972, with NASA planning to launch its Artemis 3 mission in 2026 at the earliest.