China’s state space administration announced on Monday its Tianwen-2 probe is now close enough to asteroid 2016H03 to begin investigating it, state broadcaster CCTV reported, after a journey of 400 days for over 1 billion km.
The probe was launched on May 29, 2025, and has reached a distance of 20,000 km from the asteroid. Tianwen-2 will examine the asteroid’s morphology, material composition and internal structure with a view to sampling at a later date.
It has already taken images of the asteroid.
Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
