China's Tianwen-2 probe continues on its journey to rendezvous with a Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) before heading to the Main Asteroid Belt. The second in China's interplanetary exploration program (which translates to "Questions to Heaven"), this mission will obtain samples from asteroid 469219 Kamoʻoalewa and return them to Earth. From there, China plans to send the probe to rendezvous with the Main Belt comet 311P/PANSTARRS to explore it using its 11 onboard instruments. Yesterday, the Chinese National Space Agency (CNSA) released images the probe took of Earth and the Moon.
According to the CNSA, the images were taken on May 30th by the probe's Narrow Field of View Navigation Sensor to test its functionality. This instrument is designed to detect and observe objects within the probe's vicinity and will provide visual light images of both the NEA and the Main Belt comet. When the images were taken (just a day after the mission launched), the spacecraft was approximately 590,000 km (366,620 mi) from Earth. As of Tuesday, July 1st, the Tianwen-2 probe has been in transit for over 33 days and is now more than 12 million km (~7.5 million mi) from Earth.
The mission is scheduled to perform its first deep-space maneuver on October 30th, 2025, when the probe will be over 0.31 AU (46.37 million km; 28.8 million mi). It will reach Kamo'oalewa, collect samples from it on July 4th, 2027, and return them to Earth by November. It is expected to rendezvous with 311P/PanSTARRS by January 2035 and study it for the next four months. Along with other sample return missions, Tianwen-2 aims to learn more about objects (asteroids and comets) that are essentially leftover material from the formation of the planets. In so doing, scientists hope to gain insight into how our Solar System evolved and how planets like Earth became habitable over time.
Further Reading: CGTN