China's Tiwen-2 probe continues on her trip after the rendezvous with a Near Earth Seaster (NEA) before going to the main belt of the asteroids. The second in the Interplanetary Exploration program China (which means “Questions about Heaven”) will receive this mission samples from Asteroid 469219 Kamo'oalewa and return them to earth. From there, China plans to send the probe with the main belt Comet 311P/Panstarrs to explore them with its 11 onboard instruments. Yesterday the Chinese National Space Agency (CNSA) published pictures that recorded the probe of earth and moon.
After the CNSA, the pictures were taken on May 30th by the close field of vision of the probe to test its functionality. This instrument is designed in such a way that objects are recorded and observed near the probe, and offers visual photographs of both the NEA and the main belt. When the pictures were taken (only one day after the start of the mission), the spaceship was about 590,000 km away from Earth. From Tuesday, July 1st, the Tiwen-2 probe has been located for over 33 days and is now more than 12 million km from the earth.
The Tiipen-2 probe recorded the image of the moon when it was about 590,000 km away on May 30, 2025. Credit: CNSA
The mission is scheduled to carry out its first deep maneuver on October 30, 2025 if the probe is over 0.31 AU (46.37 million km; 28.8 million mi). It will reach Kamo'oalewa, collect samples from it on July 4, 2027 and return them to earth by November. It is expected that 311p/Panstarrs will result in 311p/Panstarrs by January 2035 and examined it for the next four months. Together with other sample return missions, Tiwen-2 is said to learn more about objects (asteroids and comets), which are essentially left from the formation of the planets. Scientists hope to gain an insight into the development of our solar system and how planets and earth became habitable over time.
Further reading: CGTN
