China’s first-ever asteroid sampling mission has sent home a photograph of its first target, the Kamoalev “quasi-moon.”
The Tianwen-2 probe was launched in 2025 and traveled 620 million miles (1 billion kilometers) to reach a safe distance of about 12 miles (20 km) from Kamoalev, more formally known as asteroid 2016HO3. The spacecraft will spend nearly a year studying the asteroid using a suite of 11 different scientific instruments before attempting to collect a sample from its surface that will be sent back to Earth.
According to Chinese news agency Xinhua, the new photo was taken on July 2. It shows the asteroid to be a small, asymmetrical rock about 50–65 feet (16–20 meters) in diameter. Although its origins are unknown, some scientists believe that this quasi-moon may have formed when a powerful impact flung a piece of our own moon into space between 1 and 10 million years ago.
So-called quasi-moons (or quasi-satellites) are small bodies like Kamoaleva that orbit the Sun in orbits that keep them close to our planet. Earth has at least seven known quasi-satellites, and our planet’s gravity sometimes temporarily captures others before they are thrown back into orbit around the Sun. In general, the orbits of these quasi-moons are less stable than the orbits of real moons.
Unlike most near-Earth asteroids, which are believed to originate from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, Kamoaleva may have originated much closer to home. A 2024 study published in the journal Nature Astronomy suggests that Kamoaleva may be material ejected from the Moon by the impact that created the Giordano Bruno crater.
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The asteroid sample collected by Tianwen 2 could help prove this hypothesis if the mission is successful.
An artist’s impression of Kamo’oaleva near the Earth-Moon system. (Image credit: Eddie Graham/University of Arizona)
Tianwen-2 launched on May 28, 2025 on a Long March 3B rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China. The appearance of the spacecraft was not revealed until the Chinese space agency released an image beamed home by Tianwen 2 when it was 1.8 million miles (3 million km) from Earth. This happened just over a week after the launch.
The first public image of China’s Tianwen-2 spacecraft, released by China’s space agency long before the spacecraft was on its way to its first asteroid target. (Image credit: CNSA)
While Tianwen 2 marks China’s first attempt to sample an asteroid, Japan and the United States have already conducted successful missions of their own to collect space rock samples. Japan’s Hayabusa spacecraft carried out the world’s first asteroid sample return mission, sending material from asteroid 25143 Itokawa back to Earth in 2010.
The United States accomplished this feat in 2023 with the OSIRIS-REx mission, which captured material from the asteroid Bennu. These samples have already provided amazing scientific data, including the fact that they contain amino acids that we consider vital to life on Earth.
Tianwen-2 is the first ever Chinese mission to an asteroid and the second planetary exploration mission overall. Its first interplanetary attempt, Tianwen-1, resulted in an orbiter and rover reaching Mars in 2020.
New Tianwen missions are in development. China plans to launch the Mars sample return mission Tianwen-3 in 2028, followed by Tianwen-4 two years later to study Jupiter and Uranus.