WASHINGTON (Reuters) -China on Wednesday embarked on its first mission to retrieve samples from a nearby asteroid with the nighttime launch of its Tianwen-2 spacecraft, a robotic probe that could make the fast-growing space power the third nation to fetch pristine asteroid rocks.
China’s Long March 3B rocket lifted off around 1:31 a.m. local time from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center carrying the Tianwen-2 spacecraft, which over the next year will approach the small near-Earth asteroid named 469219 Kamoʻoalewa.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Chris Reese)
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