The fifth one belongs to China, it will depart in 2025, with the goal of shocking the sky!

For a long time, the Earth had only one natural satellite, the Moon, which is full of legends and legends. But later it was discovered that there is another asteroid orbiting the Earth-Moon system. Although it is relatively small, it looks like another natural satellite of the Earth. Does the Earth really have two natural satellites like Mars?

This asteroid was discovered by the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii on April 27, 2016. It is codenamed 2016 HO3 and has an international permanent number of 469219. It is named Kamo'oalewa, which is Hawaiian and translated into Chinese as "Oscillating Star". This is because the asteroid's orbit is quite unique. It not only orbits the sun like other asteroids, but also seems to orbit the Earth-Moon system, and "oscillates" up and down and left and right, looking like another natural satellite of the Earth-Moon system.

Since this asteroid is very small, it is difficult to see its true appearance. It is estimated that its diameter is only about 40 to 100 meters and its shape is irregular. Its orbital semi-major axis is 1.00123 astronomical units and its revolution period is about 365.93 Earth days. In other words, this asteroid is very close to the Earth in terms of distance from the Sun and its revolution time, and shares the same orbit, but the angle is slightly different from that of the Earth.

Since this asteroid will orbit almost synchronously with the Earth in the next 100 years, it looks like it is dancing around the Earth or dancing with the Earth, oscillating up and down and left and right on the Earth, hence the name "Oscillating Star" and seems to be the second natural satellite of the Earth. But in fact, "Oscillating Star" is the same as the Earth, orbiting the Sun, not the Earth-Moon system.

So, will the "dance" between "Oscillating Star" and the Earth become dangerous and lead to a kissing game? Scientific analysis and calculations show that the possibility of such a collision is not great, and its orbit is relatively stable. In the next 100 years, the minimum distance between "Oscillating Star" and the Earth will not be less than 38 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon, that is, about 15 million kilometers; the maximum distance between "Oscillating Star" and the Earth will be about 100 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon, that is, about 38 million kilometers.

However, astronomers around the world are very interested in "Oscillating Star", because solving the mystery of "Oscillating Star" is of great significance to understanding the formation of our universe and even the solar system, the formation of the Earth-Moon system and the safety of the Earth. For this reason, China's increasingly mature and powerful aerospace industry has made a grand plan: to detect "Oscillating Star" in 2025!

In fact, the China National Space Administration announced in 2019 that it had begun planning the "Oscillating Star" exploration mission. In 2021, Xu Hongliang, spokesperson of the China National Space Administration, announced the confirmation of the plan, claiming that a probe would be launched in 2025. Its main mission is to return samples from "Oscillating Star" and continue to fly to the farther main belt of asteroids to implement comet orbiting exploration missions.

Prior to this, there have been four unmanned spacecraft in the world that have conducted special surveys of asteroids. They are: Hayabusa and Hayabusa 2, launched by Japan around 2003 and 2014, which explored the asteroids 1998 SF36 (Chinese translation: Itokawa) and 1999 JU3 (Chinese translation: Ryugu), landed and completed the sampling mission and brought them back to Earth; Dawn and OSIRIS-REx, launched by the United States around 2007 and 2016, explored the largest asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres, as well as the asteroid 1999 Bennu (Chinese translation: Bennu), and brought back samples from Bennu.

Strictly speaking, there are several probes that have reached asteroids and comets, such as the New Horizons launched by NASA and the Rosetta launched by the European Space Agency. They have respectively explored the Kuiper Belt asteroid "Ultima Thule", the farthest from us, and comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and released landers to analyze the composition of the comet.

In addition, NASA also launched a spacecraft called DART in 2021, which accurately hit the asteroid Dimorphos (Chinese translation: Dimorphos) 11 million kilometers away from us on September 26, 2022, and successfully implemented an asteroid defense experiment.

However, as a specialized probe for near-Earth asteroids, the asteroid probe that my country will launch in 2025 can be considered the world's fifth specialized asteroid probe. Although the "Oscillating Star" will be only tens of millions of kilometers away from the Earth in the next 100 years, the probe will not take a simple straight line to get there, but will need to change its orbit and speed up through the gravity springboards of the Earth and Mars. It will take three years and a journey of one billion kilometers to bring back samples from the "Oscillating Star".

This expedition will reveal several scientific conjectures about "Oscillating Star": first, whether this asteroid is a meteorite from the moon; second, to understand the asteroid's true shape and size, morphology and rotation law, surface material composition, internal structure, thermal radiation and other physical parameters; third, through laboratory analysis and research of collected and recovered samples, to clarify the chemical composition and isotopic composition of the asteroid's surface materials and minerals, as well as the structural structure and age of the entire asteroid.

After the probe brought the samples back to Earth, it had only completed the main mission of the first phase. Then, with the help of the gravity of the Earth and Mars, it went through a seven-year journey and reached the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, approached Comet 133P to conduct a flyby exploration, and transmitted the relevant data back.

Therefore, this mission, which involves both asteroid and comet exploration and integrates flyby, companion flight, attachment, and sample return, is a truly world-class, high-difficulty deep space exploration, and is of great milestone significance to both China and the world's aerospace industry.

Asteroid exploration is related to our understanding of the origin of the Earth, the solar system, and human beings. It is related to the safety and life of mankind in avoiding asteroid impact disasters in the future. It is very, very important. China's participation in this great cause is a major step forward for my country's space industry and international peace cooperation. We are happy to see it succeed.

The world's fifth asteroid exploration will be launched in 2025, and the executing country will be China. The goal is to reveal the secrets of the shocking star! Congratulations and look forward to the successful completion of the mission!

This is an original article from Space-Time Communication. Please respect the author’s copyright. Thank you for your understanding and support.