Sarah Al-Ahmed:
Round what time ought to we anticipate these footage to start out flowing in?
Andrew Jones:
June 7 was what we anticipated to be the rendezvous with Kamo’oalewa. The China Nationwide Area Administration hasn’t formally confirmed that this rendezvous maneuver has taken place, however AMSAT-DL, which is a nonprofit, used their telescopes in Bochum in Germany, and Dwingeloo within the Netherlands, and so they just about confirmed that this maneuver came about. Plainly the whole lot went properly.
Wanting on the mission papers which were put on the market, what I am anticipating is that the spacecraft is about 2,000 kilometers out from the asteroid in the meanwhile, and that over the subsequent few weeks, it may start its method to the asteroid. It is going to transfer from a few thousand kilometers out right down to round about 20 kilometers.
Hopefully then round July 4, we get the affirmation that, “Sure, Tianwen-2 is in its desired orbit, this is a picture.”
From there, they will spend till April 2027 mapping the asteroid utilizing LiDAR, cameras, and sounding radar. They are going to discover out as a lot as they’ll in regards to the floor, in regards to the topography, and attempt to discover some touchdown factors for sampling utilizing three totally different sampling strategies — properly, at the very least two. After which, if potential, they’re going to attempt to anchor and fasten to the asteroid relying on what the floor seems to be.
All being properly, they’ll depart from the asteroid on the twenty fourth of April 2027, which additionally occurs to be China’s Nationwide Area Day. So in a yr and a half, the reentry capsules ought to come by means of the environment and land safely. After which we’ll have a fourth set of samples from an asteroid.
