China launches 1st mission to retrieve asteroid samples

China successfully launched its first mission to retrieve samples from a nearby asteroid Thursday, state media reported.

The Tianwen-2 spacecraft lifted off atop a Long March-3B carrier rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province, the Global Times reported.

The Tianwen-2 probe successfully deployed its solar panels and entered its designated orbit approximately 18 minutes after launch, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA.)

The Tianwen missions are a series of robotic interstellar exploration launched by the CNSA to explore the solar system.

Tianwen means "heavenly questions” or "questions to heaven."

China's Tianwen-1 Mars probe mission was launched in July 2020 and "achieved all designated goals, including orbiting, landing and deploying a rover to survey the Martian surface in a single mission," the newspaper reported.

The Tianwen-2 mission will collect samples from the near-Earth asteroid 2016HO3 and explore the main-belt comet 311P, according to the CNSA.

Asteroid exploration is of great significance, and scientific research on asteroids holds immense value, said Liu Jianjun, deputy chief designer of the Tianwen-2 mission.

He said that studying asteroids, which were formed around 4.5 billion years ago in the early solar system, can provide important information for understanding Earth and its evolution.

*Writing by Aamir Latif