FPI / May 30, 2025
By Richard Fisher
China’s first asteroid sample return mission on May 29, 2024, is set to begin a much larger program of asteroid exploration-exploitation to assist military-space ambitions.
A slide from an April 2023 conference outlines China’s asteroid goals: 2030, impact; 2035, deflect; and 2045, control. / DSELThe program would also assist longer range Chinese ambitions to create outposts into the Solar System.
On May 29, from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center (XSLC) and atop a China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) Long March-3B space launch vehicle, China hopes to begin its Tianwen-2 mission that will return samples from an asteroid and then explore a comet.
Tianwen-2 is a 2,000-kilogram satellite manufactured by the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), and consists of an orbiter platform, and a small landing vehicle with grappling arms to anchor it on the asteroid, so it can use its collecting arm, and can use an explosive to loosen the regolith.
The sample is to be returned to the Tianwen-2 satellite and to reach Earth in a very small reentry capsule.
A three-part mission begins with a 12-month journey for a 2026 landing on the asteroid 469219 Kamoʻoalewa, a small 40-100-meter diameter body in a solar obit close to that of the Earth, viewed as a stable body from which to collect a 100-gram regolith sample.
By 2027 the sample will begin its return journey to Earth, where it will be analyzed and possibly answer questions whether Kamoʻoalewa broke off from the Moon.
The Tianwen-2 satellite will then use Earth’s gravity to gain speed for a 13-month journey to Mars, again banking off of Martian gravity, to fly to and orbit the main-belt comet 311P/PANSTARRS from about 2033 to 2034.
In addition to scientific objectives, China’s asteroid ambitions include military dimensions.
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Tianwen-2 mission launches China’s ambitious dual-use asteroid program added by Editor Two on May 30, 2025
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