China will hunt for an asteroid made of lunar material

Later this month, China will score another space success with the launch of the Tianwen-2 mission, an ambitious expedition targeting a small asteroid called 469219 Kamo'oalewa. This asteroid, by the way, is not like any other. It is, in fact, one of Earth's seven known quasi-satellites and, even more fascinating, could be the first asteroid we've seen made exclusively of lunar material. This hypothesis, which would challenge much of what we know about cosmic impacts, could be confirmed by laboratory studies of the fragments that Tianwen-2 will collect and bring back to Earth in approximately two and a half years.

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