China’s Tianwen-2 Probe Captures Close-Range Images of Asteroid Kamo’oalewa After Japan’s Earlier Flyby

China’s Tianwen-2 probe reached asteroid Kamo’oalewa on July 2 and captured the first close-range images from about 20 kilometers away. The spacecraft had first detected the asteroid on June 6 after completing multiple deep-space orbital adjustments during its 400-day journey that covered roughly 1 billion kilometers. Tianwen-2 was launched in May 2025.

Japan’s Torifune spacecraft had conducted a prior flyby of the asteroid. Kamo’oalewa is the most stable of Earth’s known quasi-satellites and orbits the Sun in near-synchronous motion with Earth. The asteroid has an average diameter of about 41 meters and rotates at high speed.

Tianwen-2 carries multiple cameras of varying focal lengths, including a detachable unit for sample collection, and will conduct detailed observations of the asteroid’s shape, material composition, and internal structure. The probe plans to collect samples using gas jets or anchoring and drilling methods before departing the asteroid in April 2027.

Any samples gathered would be released in a capsule during an Earth flyby in November 2027.

In May 2026 an international research team that included the Chinese Academy of Sciences published a paper reanalyzing data on the asteroid. The paper found that Kamo’oalewa’s absorption band matches LL chondrite meteorites rather than lunar silicates.

“It is highly likely to contain primordial information from the early days of the solar system’s formation, and it holds great scientific value for studying early material composition, formation processes, and evolutionary history,” said Han Siyuan, deputy director of the Lunar and Space Exploration Engineering Center and spokesperson for the Tianwen-2 mission.

The spacecraft continues its mission to gather additional data on the asteroid before sample return operations begin.