CHINA HAS REACHED EARTH'S MINI-MOON
Everyone knows that Earth has a Moon. But did you know that it also has a mini-Moon? This week, a spacecraft from China pulled up alongside it.
On July 6th, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced that its Tianwen-2 probe has arrived at asteroid 469219 Kamoʻoalewa, a space rock that loops around our planet about once per year.
Snapped from about 20 km away, this 'first contact' photo reveals a house-sized body tumbling once every 28 minutes. That means it's probably a solid object, not a rubble pile that would easily spin apart.
Kamoʻoalewa is not a true moon. It is a "quasi-satellite," tracing lazy corkscrews around Earth while actually orbiting the sun in near-lockstep with our planet. Discovered by the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii in 2016, its name comes from a Hawaiian chant and means, roughly, "oscillating celestial fragment."
This isn't Earth's only mini-Moon; there are at least 7 others. However, Kamoʻoalewa stands out as the most stable. It is expected to remain a quasi-satellite for centuries. That stability made it an attractive target for China's growing space program.
Kamoʻoalewa looks like a chip off of something bigger. But what?
Some researchers believe it is a piece of the Moon, blasted into space by the impact that dug lunar crater Giordano Bruno. Others argue it wandered in from the asteroid belt. Tianwen-2 could settle the debate by bringing a piece of the mini-Moon home.
In the months ahead, the spacecraft will scout sampling sites using cameras and radar. Then comes the hard part: Grabbing material from a rapidly-spinning space rock. Tianwen-2 will try three different techniques: a touch-and-go tag like NASA's OSIRIS-REx, a hover-and-scoop with a robotic arm, and an "anchor and attach" maneuver that would fasten the probe directly to the rock's surface. Mission planners hope one of them will work.
If all goes well, Tianwen-2 will leave Kamoʻoalewa on April 24, 2027China's National Space Dayand drop its sample capsule into Earth's atmosphere in late November 2027. The spacecraft itself won't stop: it will sling past Earth toward Comet 311P/PANSTARRS.
Stay tuned for updates from Kamoʻoalewa.
https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=09&month=07&year=2026
tards keep comforting their insecurity by telling themselves china is a paper tiger, their tech is inferior, and they are decades behind the US
pride goeth before the fall