This Chinese Spacecraft Is Traveling to One of Earth’s Quasi-Moons

China National The Space Administration shared the first picture of the Tianwen-2 probe, which is on its way to Kamo’alewa, a asteroid near Earth.

The image was taken by a camera on the probe, which is currently more than 3 million kilometers from the ground, and one of its wings appears with its solar panels. It is also the first glimpse of CNSA from the space probe, which was launched on May 29 in a 3B March 3B missile from the Xichang satellite center in Ziwan, China. The design of Tianwen-2 paintings is similar to its appearance on the space probe in Lucy, NASA, which explores floating asteroids near Jupiter. This works to meet the requirements of the required authority for the trip.

TianWen-2 mission is to land on the surface of Kamo’alewa, sampling, and return to Earth. The spacecraft is scheduled to land on the surface of the asteroid in July 2026. Before that, several months will spend the Kamoalewa study from a safe distance, to determine the sampling area, before following up with landing maneuvers, a particularly difficult task due to the low attractiveness of the asteroid.

Once the samples are collected, TianWen-2 will return to the ground and send its samples to the surface in a capsule, before trying to use the gravity of the earth as a splisher to go about 311p/PansTarrs, an unusual asteroid that exceeds Mars that contains some of the properties of the COMET, including the visible tail. TianWen-2 is expected to perform this task until 2035.

Moon puzzle in Hawaii

Kamo’oalewa is one of the seven well-known monologues of the Earth-creatures that appear to revolve around our planet, but it is not actually connected to the Earth, and it actually revolves around the sun in a similar orbit of Earth.

Astronomers discovered it at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii in 2016 – whose name means “the oscillating heavenly organism” in Hawaii – about 4.65 million kilometers of our planet, 12 times away from Earth from the moon. It is estimated that Kamo’oalewa is approximately 40 to 100 meters, and has maintained its current orbit for 100 years, and it may maintain it for another 300.

It is hoped that Tianwen-2 can solve the mystery of Kamo’aalewa origin. One theory is that it is a large part of the rocks that have separated from the moon millions of years ago. The task of taking samples will help multiple scientific investigations in the formation of rocky heavenly bodies, as well as assistance scientists in the search for evidence about the formation of the solar system.

Note evidence and modeling indicates that Kamo’alewa was revolving around the sun for millions of years, albeit with an unstable path. The direct exploration of this asteroid can expand, in addition, knowledge of near heavenly objects that may threaten Earth.

This story was originally appeared on Wireless En español It was translated from Spanish.