Smile! A spacecraft simply caught you — and everybody else on our planet — on digicam whereas snapping a selfie.
China’s Tianwen 2 spacecraft took an image of itself, in addition to the Earth, whereas en path to a mysterious asteroid. The picture, launched Wednesday (Oct. 1), additionally reveals the Chinese language flag on the facet of the China Nationwide Area Administration spacecraft.
Our planet shines within the distance roughly 26.5 million miles (43 million km) away from Tianwen 2. For comparability, the common distance between Earth and the sun is more than three times that: 93 million miles (150 million km).
Tianwen 2 is “functioning normally” and collecting data as expected,, wrote Chinese state media outlet CCTV in an English-language description accompanying the picture’s launch. “The probe has efficiently accomplished a collection of in-orbit exams, together with the deployment of sampling units and self-checks of digital units,” the assertion added.
That is all in preparation for the massive second: reaching the mysterious asteroid Kamo’oalewa, which is one Earth’s seven identified “quasi moons.” Tianwen 2 will spend a number of months doing engine burns to succeed in its vacation spot, which ought to occur in July 2026. Then the spacecraft will spend a number of months at work studying concerning the asteroid, which can have been a chunk of the moon thrown into area after a huge impact.
Tianwen 2 will acquire samples and ship them again to Earth in late 2027, utilizing a reentry capsule. Then the spacecraft will slingshot round our planet for one more deep-space rendezvous: a go to with most important belt comet 311P/PANSTARRS, anticipated to occur round 2035.
China operates independently of a lot of the area neighborhood. NASA and different U.S. authorities businesses are restricted from bilateral work with China or Chinese language-owned firms underneath a 2011 legislation often known as the Wolf Modification.
Extra lately, Congressional hearings have expressed safety issues about Chinese language actions in area, including that the U.S. is in a brand new “area race” with that nation to return astronauts to the moon.
China is exhibiting itself to be an area powerhouse, together with in previous missions associated to Tianwen 2’s targets. China beforehand carried out lunar pattern returns with the Chang’e 5 near-side mission in 2020, and Chang’e 6‘s far-side mission in 2024. The nation additionally did a flyby of the asteroid Toutatis in 2012 with Chang’e 2, after that mission mapped the moon.
As for deep-space exploration, China has expertise there as effectively: Tianwen 1, launched in 2020, despatched an orbiter, a lander and a rover to Mars.
