China's Latest Space Mission Will Grab Samples of a Near-Earth Asteroid and Comet

The latest mission out of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) will examine not one, but two space bodies. After Tianwen-2 launches Wednesday afternoon, it will rendezvous with a near-Earth asteroid, then send samples to Earth before setting out to meet with a distant comet.
If all goes according to plan, Tianwen-2 will launch from a Long March 3B rocket at Xichang spaceport around 1:30 p.m. EDT. (In Beijing, that’s 1:30 a.m. on May 29.) A translated statement shared Monday says that “various preparations for the mission [were] progressing steadily” and that CNSA was preparing to fill the rocket with propellant. 
After departing Xichang, Tianwen-2 will make its way to Kamo‘oalewa, an asteroid identified by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (PanSTARRS) at Hawaii’s Haleakala Observatory in 2016. Kamo‘oalewa’s has many quirky traits: It rotates rapidly (about once every 28 minutes) and isn’t gravitationally bound to Earth, despite its long-term, co-orbital relationship with our planet. The quasi-satellite—which is thought to have come from a lunar impact—is expected to circle Earth via its highly elliptical orbit for at least another 300 years.
Once it meets up with Kamo‘oalewa, Tianwen-2 will try out a handful of sampling techniques, one of which will involve an attempt at landing on the asteroid itself. Afterward, it will return to Earth—sort of. As it nears our planet sometime in 2027, it will send its samples home in a reentry module, then use Earth’s gravity to gather slingshot momentum for the second leg of its journey.
That leg will be far longer than the first. Tianwen-2 is set to travel to 311P/PANSTARRS (also known as P/2013 P5), a comet also identified by astronomers using PanSTARRS in 2013. Located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, P/2013 P5 is nowhere close to Earth, and reaching it will take several years. CNSA hopes Tianwen-2 will meet with P/2013 P5 in early 2035, after which its onboard instruments—cameras, spectrometers, radar, particle analyzers, a magnetometer, and an ejecta analyzer—will gather data to send home.
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