by According to the chief designer of the country’s Tianwen 1 Mars mission, China plans to launch its second-ever deep space exploration effort in 2025.
Zhang Rongqiao told China Central Television on May 13 that the Tianwen 2 asteroid probe has entered the technical development phase.
“The components are undergoing extensive testing,” Zhang said, a day before the one-year anniversary of China’s landing Zhurong Mars Rover, part of the Tianwen 1 mission. “We are moving forward as planned and expect to launch it in 2025.”
Related: The latest on China’s space program
Tianwen 1 was a big step for China; it was the first fully domestically developed interplanetary mission and made China’s first landing on another planet. But the succession will also be complex and challenging.
The more than 10-year Tianwen 2 mission will first target the small near-Earth asteroid kamo’oalewa, which may in fact be a blown-away piece of Earth’s moon. The spacecraft will collect samples of the space rock using a touch-and-go technique similar to that demonstrated by Japan’s Hayabusa 2 and NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex asteroid probes.
Tianwen 2 will also attempt an unprecedented anchoring method, using four robotic arms to land on Kamo’oalewa, with drills on the arms attaching the probe to the surface of the 130-foot-wide (40 meters) asteroid.
Tianwen 2 is expected to return to Earth more than two years after launch and release its priceless payload. But that won’t be the end of the mission. After releasing its reentry pod, Tianwen 2 will use Earth’s gravity to propel it toward another ancient remnant of the solar system: a “active asteroid,” an object with properties of both asteroids and Come eat† (Active asteroids used to be known as main belt comets, but that term has fallen out of fashion lately because these bodies tend to have a more asteroid-like composition.)
The spacecraft begins an approximately seven-year journey to 311P/PANSTARRS. Once there, it will orbit the object and analyze it using an array of cameras and spectrometers to gain insight into questions such as the mystery of the source of the water on Earth.
The Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences will also be involved in the active asteroid phase of the mission. The institute has been selected to supply particulate and solar wind detectors after a 2019 call for proposals This was announced by the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
The mission concept has changed since early proposals were made at the end of the past decade. Originally, the spacecraft would have visited the active asteroid 133P/Elst-Pizarro after the sampling phase. Selecting the second target likely depended on when the spacecraft would launch.
The mission was also tentatively dubbed “Zheng He,” after a famous Chinese naval explorer of the early 14th century, with the name evoking historical exploration feats as China embarks on new expeditions into deep space.
Moving on, Tianwen 3, currently slated for launch in 2028, will attempt to collect samples from Mars and bring them to Earth, while Tianwen 4 will send a probe to Jupiter, according to CCTV+†
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