Tianwen-2 has basically completed the development of the first sample and is expected to be launched around May 2025Zhang Rongqiao, the chief designer of China's first Mars exploration mission project, said in an interview with the media recently that Tianwen-2 has basically completed the work of the prototype development stage, and will transfer to the prototype development stage in the middle of 2023. It will be in May 2025. Launch before and after.Zhang Rongqiao said that the detection object of the Tianwen-2 mission is an internationally recognized celestial body with its own particularity, that is, the near-Earth asteroid 2016HO3. The Tianwen-2 mission will realize the sample return of the asteroid, which will be the first time that China has retrieved samples from the interplanetary. This asteroid is more than 40 million kilometers away from the earth, and it is very small. After completing this main mission, Tianwen-2 will also go to detect a newly discovered main belt comet.Talking about the difficulty of asteroid detection, Zhang Rongqiao said that unlike Mars, there is no gravity on asteroids, which means that the spacecraft cannot fly around the asteroid, but can only catch up with it in the vast universe, fly with it, and accompany it Attach in the process, choose the opportunity to sample.In addition, China has also planned the Tianwen-3 and Tianwen-4 missions. Zhang Rongqiao said that the Tianwen-3 mission will return samples from Mars, and the Tianwen-4 mission will explore the Jupiter system. Key technical breakthroughs."
