China's first-ever asteroid sampling mission has sent home a picture of its first target, the "quasi-moon" Kamo'oalewa.
The Tianwen-2 probe launched in 2025 and traveled 620 million miles (1 billion kilometers) to reach a safe distance about 12 miles (20 km) away from Kamo'oalewa, more formally known as asteroid 2016HO3. The spacecraft will spend nearly a year studying the asteroid with a suite of 11 different scientific instruments before attempting to collect a sample from its surface, which will be sent back to Earth.
The new photo was taken on July 2, according to China's Xinhua news outlet, a...
