China is preparing for a plan to send unmanned probes to near-Earth asteroids and comets to collect data.
Long March-7 Y6 rocket carrying the Tianzhou-5 cargo ship into space
The Long March-7 Y6 rocket carrying the Xuanzhou-5 cargo ship was launched from the spacecraft launch site in Wenchang, Hainan Province, China on Nov. 12, 2022. (Documentary Photo: HX/VNA)
Speaking to the press, Mr. Zhang Rongqiao, principal designer of China’s planetary exploration program and mission paradise 2said the main purpose of the Tianwen 2 mission is to “launch the probe”. asteroid 2016HO3 to take samples. The spacecraft will orbit and then land on the asteroid to collect samples. If successful, these will be the first samples China has collected from interplanetary space. After completing the mission, the spacecraft is expected to continue its journey to probe a comet in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Asteroid 2016HO3, likely no wider than 100m, was first discovered by the Ƥan-STARRS Asteroid Research Telescope in Hawaii, US in April 2016. According to American Aeronautics and Space Administration (ƝASA), this asteroid orbits the Sun in an elliptical path similar to Earth’s orbit. 2016HO3 also orbits Earth as a “semi-satellite”.
In 2021, the unmanned spacecraft called Interrogation 1 landed on Mars, making China the second country to successfully land a spacecraft on the surface of this planet, after the United States.
In 2021, the OЅIRIS-REx spacecraft. The NASA spacecraft landed on Bennu, a skyscraper-sized asteroid about 320 million kilometers from Earth. Before that, in 2019, a Japanese probe landed on Ryugu, an asteroid 250 million km from Earth.
Article Source: VNA/Journals
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China is preparing for a plan to launch unmanned probes to near-Earth asteroids and comets to collect data.
