(ECNS) -- China's Tianwen-2 probe has reached the asteroid 2016HO3 to begin scientific exploration, completing a roughly 400-day journey of about 1 billion kilometers, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced on Monday.
A new image released by the CNSA the same day shows the asteroid as captured by the probe from about 20 kilometers away.
China launched Tianwen-2, its first asteroid sample-return mission, on May 29, 2025. Over the course of the decade-long expedition, the mission aims to collect samples from the near-Earth asteroid 2016HO3 and then travel on to explore 311P, a main-belt comet lying beyond Mars.
As it drew closer, the probe captured images of the asteroid. Using optical navigation data gathered during this close approach, the mission team refined the asteroid's ephemeris, shrinking its positional uncertainty, previously pinned down only through ground-based observations, from hundreds of kilometers to the scale of a single kilometer, according to the CNSA.
Along the way, the probe carried out deep-space maneuvers and trajectory corrections. It first detected the asteroid on June 6, settled into a coplanar trajectory with it on June 7, and closed to within 2,000 kilometers on June 19.
From here, the probe will gradually undertake more detailed exploration, gathering data on the asteroid's shape, composition and internal structure to lay the groundwork for the sample collection to follow, the CNSA said.
(By Zhang Dongfang)
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