China National The administration of the space has released the first photo from the Tianwen-2 probe, which is on the way to Kamo’oalew, asteroids from the almost earth.
The image was captured by a camera aboard the probe, which is currently over 3 million kilometers from the ground, and shows one of the wings with placed solar panels. It is also the first look that CNSA offered its space probe, which began on May 29 in a long 3B rocket with Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the city of Zeyuan, China. The design of the Tianwen-2 panels is similar to the appearance of Lucy, NASA space probe, which explore the asteroids floating near Jupiter. They are used to meet the requirements of the power required during travel.
The Tianwen-2 mission is landing on the surface of Kamo’oalew, collecting samples and returning to the ground. The spacecraft is to land on the surface of the asteroid in July 2026. Earlier it will spend a few months studying Kamo’oalew from a protected distance to determine its area of sampling, before going with landing maneuvers, a particularly arduous task, taking into account low asteroid gravity.
After gathering the samples, Tianwen-2 will return to the ground and sends his samples to the surface in the capsule, before trying to apply the gravity of the earth as suspensions to head towards 311p/Panstarrs, an extremely-looking asteroids outside Mars, which has part of the comet characteristics, including observable tails. Tianwen-2 is expected to conduct this mission until 2035.
Enigma of Hawaiian Quasi-Moon
Kamo’oalewa is one of the seven known lands like well -being—Bide, which seem to orbit our planet, but which are not really bound by gravity to Earth and are reality are asteroids circulating through the sun in an orbit similar to earth.
Kamo’oalewa, discovered in 2016 by astronomers at Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii – whose name means “oscillating blue object” in Hawaii – there is about 4.65 million kilometers from our planet, 12 times further from the earth than the moon. It is estimated that Kamo’oalewa is about 40 to 100 meters, keeps his current orbit for 100 years and will probably keep it at 300.
We hope that Tianwen-2 can solve the mystery of Kamo’oaleva’s origin. One theory It is that it is a piece of rock that has broken away from the moon millions of years ago. The sampling mission will facilitate in many scientific research on the composition of rocky blue bodies, as well as scientists of facilitate in searching for clues about the creation of the Solar System.
Observation evidence and modeling suggest that Kamo’oalewa has been circling the sun for millions of years, although with an unstable trajectory. Direct exploration of this asteroid can also expand knowledge about nearby blue objects, which can potentially pose a threat to Earth.
This story originally appeared Wired in Spanish and was translated from Spanish.