By BlueShift | 2025-06-03

Beijing has invested billions of dollars in its space program in recent years in an effort to achieve what President Xi Jinping describes as the country's "space dream."

It has built a space station orbiting the Earth and plans to run a crewed mission to the Moon this decade ahead of establishing a permanent base there.

In its latest bid to assert itself as a global leader in space exploration, China launched a space probe set to travel to an asteroid near Mars.

The Tianwen-2 spacecraft was launched May 29 aboard a Long March 3B rocket, bound for the asteroid that Chinese scientists hope will contain samples containing potentially "groundbreaking" results.

The mission launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province, China, and is expected to make contact with the asteroid 2016HO3, also known as 469219 Kamo'oalewa, after about a year of space travel.

Over a decade-long expedition, Tianwen-2 is tasked with collecting samples from the surface of asteroid 2016HO3 and exploring a celestial anomaly known as 311P discovered in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter before returning to Earth's surface, according to the country's space agency.

311P resembles a comet with tails; however, it "challenges astronomers' conventional understanding about a comet, as the region is too close to the Sun for a comet to retain its volatile materials like water ice," Xinhua reported.

Shan Zhongde, director of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), expressed high expectations for the Tianwen-2 mission, while acknowledging the mission's long duration and significant risks.

Shan "expressed his expectation of yielding groundbreaking discoveries and expanding humanity's knowledge of the cosmos," Xinhua reported.

Asteroid missions

Studying asteroids can reveal more information about the formation of the Earth and other celestial bodies. Further, as asteroids can collide with Earth's surface, studying their structure and composition can help scientists develop methods to deflect or destroy them.

Asteroid samples that are collected in space -- as opposed to samples collected from those that have landed on Earth -- remain pristine and uncontaminated by Earth's atmosphere.

If Tianwen-2 succeeds, China will become only the third nation in history to collect a sample directly from an asteroid -- joining the United States and Japan.

Japan achieved this feat in 2005 with a mission to the Itokawa asteroid and then again in 2019 to the Ryugu. In 2020, a NASA capsule completed a seven-year mission to collect samples from the Bennu asteroid.

China has been successful before. The CNSA dispatched two successful sample missions to the Moon, and each returned with usable samples.

Kamo'oalewa orbits the Sun and is a "quasi-satellite" of Earth as well.

The origins of the asteroid "remain an open question," Benjamin Sharkey, a planetary astronomer at the University of Maryland, told The New York Times.

Sharkey observed the asteroid telescopically, noting that the asteroid appears to be composed of the same volcanic matter as is found on the Moon, suggesting that the asteroid could be a former piece of the Moon's surface that broke away after a meteor impact.

Scientists studying the asteroid hope to gain insights on the relationship between the Earth and the Moon.

China's space ambitions

Discovered by scientists in Hawaii in 2016, Kamo'oalewa is roughly 40 to 100 meters in diameter.

The relative smallness of the asteroid makes it a tricky target. It has little surface area on which to land.

The Tianwen-2 will use two approaches to collect samples.

The first, used by both the United States and Japan, is known as "Touch and Go." In this method, the spacecraft briefly touches the asteroid's surface, stirs up material using either compressed gas or a projectile and collects the resulting debris before departing.

The second technique, called "Anchor and Attach," remains untested. Tianwen-2 plans to use a set of drills to secure itself to the asteroid, allowing it to extract both surface-level and deeper subsurface samples.

The Tianwen-2 sets the stage for China's Tianwen-3 mission, which aims to retrieve samples from Mars and return to Earth, another ambitious project indicative of China's deepening focus on space superiority.