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This Chinese Spacecraft Is Traveling to One of Earth’s Quasi-Moons
The Tianwen-2 probe has sent a self-portrait as it heads toward one of the most enigmatic objects in our space neighborhood: the quasi-moon Kamo’oalewa.
Before then, it will spend several months studying Kamo’oalewa from a safe distance, to determine its sampling area, before proceeding with landing maneuvers, a particularly difficult task given the asteroid’s low gravity. Discovered in 2016 by astronomers at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii, Kamo’oalewa—whose name means “oscillating celestial object” in Hawaiian—is located approximately 4.65 million kilometers from our planet, 12 times further away from Earth than the moon. The sampling mission will help multiple scientific investigations into the composition of rocky celestial bodies, as well as aid scientists in the search for clues about the formation of the solar system.
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