Did China Just Take the Lead in Space Race?

cs_opinion_img
As China embarks on its Tianwen-2 journey towards asteroid 2016 HO₃ and comet 311P, it challenges the USA and Japan in the crucial race of deep space exploration. This mission not only highlights China's increasing technological prowess but also signals a brand-new chapter in the race of space exploration.
May 29, 2025
author_image
Aerospace Commentator
author_image
Top picks selected by the China Academy's editorial team from Chinese media, translated and edited to provide better insights into contemporary China.
Click Register
Register
Try Premium Member
for Free with a 7-Day Trial
Click Register
Register
Try Premium Member for Free with a 7-Day Trial

On May 29th, a beam of light from China pierced the night sky, heading towards the depths of space millions of kilometers away. There, a dormant asteroid is set to be awakened by Tianwen-2, igniting a “three-way battle” in human space exploration.

This confrontation represents the pinnacle of human deep-space exploration to date. Japan was the first to take action, with the United States following suit. China, with a classic movie line, calmly and confidently steps into the interstellar arena, asking, “Do I have a habit of being early?”

Illustration of Tianwen-2 Asteroid Exploration

The Brave Lone Warrior Fulfills National Memory

China’s planetary exploration project did not begin with Tianwen-2. In 2020, Tianwen-1 headed to Mars, achieving orbital insertion, soft landing, and surface patrol in its first mission. This marked the “three-in-one” mission as the first globally to succeed in a single launch. In contrast, the United States took almost 40 years to achieve a closed loop of technology from orbital flight to surface landing on Mars.

Five years later, Tianwen-2 takes on an upgraded challenge, embarking on China’s first asteroid sampling return mission. This marks a major advancement in China’s deep-space exploration capability and signals the planetary exploration project’s entry into a new strategic phase. The simple phrase “sample return” belies the mission’s technical difficulty and strategic significance.

Full Process Diagram of the Tianwen-2’s Dual-Asteroid Mission – Readers should note the real engineering time points

In 2020, Chang’e 5 successfully brought lunar soil back to Earth, covering an average Earth-Moon distance of about 380,000 km. However, the distance between asteroid 2016 HO₃ and Earth can range from 20 million to 40 million kilometers, making it 50 to 100 times the Earth-Moon distance. This magnitude difference implies that mission difficulty doubles while requiring concurrent advancements in rendezvous precision, communication delay, flight control capabilities, and re-entry speed.

This mission is not merely a summation of the technical paths of Chang’e 5 and Tianwen-1, but rather a systematic challenge that demands the resolution of three core difficulties: asteroid rendezvous and adherence sampling, high-speed high-enthalpy re-entry, and deep-space long-term autonomous flight control.

As a brave lone warrior, Tianwen-2 embarks on three arduous tasks alone. (Note: Specific timeline is estimated and for reference only)

From May 2025 to November 2025, this brave warrior will journey alone towards the target asteroid 2016 HO₃. In an environment of almost negligible gravity, it will complete rendezvous, attachment, and sampling.

The diameter of this asteroid is only about 50 meters. The probe must rely on high-precision image recognition and an autonomous navigation system to approach the surface at an extremely low speed of about 2 meters per second for targeted adherence sampling. This task is far more complex than landing on Mars, as there is no stable landing surface or attitude buffering, and any attitude control error could result in failure.

Asteroid 2016 HO₃ is an Earth co-orbital object, stably orbiting the Sun with horseshoe-shaped trajectories around Earth.

China chose this asteroid as a sampling target for two main reasons: its relative proximity to Earth and its orbit being similar to Earth’s, which makes it relatively controllable in terms of risk. Additionally, its scientific value is significant, as this asteroid may have formed around the same time as Earth and could even be a fragment from Earth’s formation process. Studying its samples could help unveil secrets about Earth’s origin and early solar system evolution.

From November 2025 to November 2027, this brave warrior will return to Earth at high speed with its samples. The return capsule will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at a super high speed of 12.1 kilometers per second, exceeding the second cosmic velocity and comparable to the re-entry speed of an intercontinental missile warhead.

This necessitates the return capsule to withstand extreme high-enthalpy conditions—intense heat and impact hit almost simultaneously, akin to being torn by flames and fierce wind. Traditional materials cannot endure such conditions, which prompted China to develop a new spherical-cone configuration and gradient heat-resistant materials. Precision parachute deployment at more than twice the speed of sound presents unprecedented challenges to thermal protection and control systems.

From November 2027 to November 2034, after releasing the samples, this brave lone warrior will continue its journey towards main belt comet 311P, over a billion kilometers away.

The Hubble Space Telescope’s Image of Main Belt Comet 311P

Do people still remember when Halley’s Comet returned in 1986, trailing a long plume across the night sky and captivating the entire nation? Many were only in elementary school, recalling adults saying: “It’s a once-in-76-year astronomical spectacle, lucky enough to see it once in a lifetime.” Did those youth ever imagine that decades later, China would be capable of launching probes to chase another mysterious comet across hundreds of millions of kilometers? From gazing at the stars to reaching them, Chinese aerospace continually transforms dreams into reality in remarkable ways.

Main Belt Comet 311P is an unstable orbit comet likely undergoing disintegration or dust-tail eruption. This mission represents not only scientific exploration but also a deep-space examination of China’s long-term mission management and system robustness: communication delays run into dozens of minutes, meaning the spacecraft must autonomously handle flight control, system diagnostics, and mission adjustments over a seven-year period.

From Halley’s Comet crossing Chinese skies to China launching its probes towards main belt comet 311P, this half-century-spanning stellar journey will be eternally engraved as two monumental national memories.

The Three Players at the Table

Given the extreme technical difficulties of asteroid sample return missions, only three players can truly sit at the table – China, the United States, and Japan.

The Soviet Union attempted a similar mission but ultimately failed; The European Space Agency’s “Rosetta” successfully landed on a comet but had no plans for a return mission; The upcoming “Hera” mission will only observe NASA’s post-impact tests at close range and similarly does not have sample return capabilities.

In terms of mission difficulty and accomplishment, Japan’s Hayabusa2 has clearly demonstrated an exceptionally high level of technical precision and innovation.

CG Rendering of Hayabusa2

In 2018, after the Hayabusa2 spacecraft reached the target asteroid Ryugu, it successfully fired a 5-gram tantalum metal “bullet”, achieving the first asteroid surface sample collection. It then precisely launched a 2.5-kilogram copper impactor, creating an impact crater approximately 10 meters in diameter and successfully extracting subsurface material samples. Additionally, it deployed four micro-rovers, including the Japanese-developed MINERVA-II and the MASCOT rover in collaboration with Germany and France, completing surface hopping and analysis tasks in a low-gravity environment.

Under a strict budgetary constraint of only $150 million, Hayabusa2 accomplished a complex mission of impact, sampling, and multi-point landing, making it an engineering marvel in the aerospace field. As of now, however, Japan has yet to announce a clear new generation asteroid sample return mission, which is not due to a lack of technology but reflects the limitations of strategic planning and budgetary assurances.

The Japanese Hayabusa2 carried a “bullet” and a “projectile” for sampling purposes.

Unlike Japan’s Hayabusa2, the U.S. OSIRIS-REx mission relied on a robotic arm to collect samples from the asteroid Bennu, which is mythologically a phoenix-like god in Egyptian mythology. This was NASA’s first mission to bring asteroid samples back to Earth, collecting up to 250 grams. It safely returned to Earth in 2023 and will continue to another asteroid, Apophis, the dark destroyer god in Egyptian mythology, planning a flyby exploration in 2029. It, like China’s Tianwen-2, undertakes a dual-asteroid mission to continuously explore two asteroids.

OSIRIS-REx was a successful mission, but its cost was eye-popping: The primary mission cost $800 million, rocket launch costs nearly $200 million, and the extended mission added $200 million, bringing the total to nearly $1.2 billion. For a single spacecraft mission, such an expense is undoubtedly heavy. Whether even a small piece of that $1.2 billion was signed off by “Commissioner Smith” and funneled into familiar suppliers’ pockets, outsiders will never know. The mission was completed, and the samples returned, but the slow, expensive, heavy system cost behind this system is quietly slowing down America’s deep space exploration.

CG image of the U.S. OSIRIS-REx spacecraft asteroid sampling.

China’s Tianwen-2 doesn’t boast flashy maneuvers, but it has a high degree of system integration and engineering stability. It combines Japan’s meticulous execution with the U.S.’s mission extensibility. More importantly, it is backed by a resource-sustainable, strategically clear, and systematically mature national engineering platform. From Tianwen-1’s “three-in-one” Mars mission to today’s Tianwen-2’s dual-asteroid challenge, high-enthalpy return, and ten-year deep space extension, although China entered the game slightly later, it has significant late-mover advantages and complete system capabilities, determining China’s planetary exploration will have a higher ceiling in the future.

September 24, 2023, U.S. recovery of the OSIRIS-REx mission’s return capsule.

True Confidence

True confidence doesn’t lie in belittling opponents but in recognizing their strengths and still firmly committing to one’s direction.

Hayabusa2’s success is undeniable. It completed impact sampling, rover deployment, and precise return under an extremely low budget, achieving all high-difficulty actions in one mission, a meticulous raid in the history of human aerospace. It resembles a Zero fighter in the Pacific theater of World War II: impeccable in technical details but trapped in a body with a low upgrade ceiling, crushed beneath the industrial giant’s war chariot. It won a battle but lost the entire war.

The U.S. faces the opposite problem. It has a robust system and mature standards, but this system is becoming increasingly expensive and harder to mobilize. While the OSIRIS-REx mission was undoubtedly successful, it came at a high cost, and its future extension is being gradually consumed by fiscal reality. Even if the system remains, its ability to act is declining.

China is taking a different path—structural progression and system growth. From Tianwen-1’s one-time triple success to Tianwen-2’s twin-asteroid challenge, high-enthalpy returns, and deep space extensions over ten years, to the planned Tianwen-3, Tianwen-4, lunar research station, and deep space relay platform, China is constructing not one-off missions, but a self-iterating, continuously evolving capability platform.

What truly decides the direction of space order is not who started first or who retrieved a bit of stardust. It is who can build a system, consistently play their cards, and have a next launch after each mission. This isn’t a duel; it’s a game of Three Kingdoms. And China has begun to lead the rhythm.

Editor: Zhongxiaowen

References
VIEWS BY

author_image
Aerospace Commentator
author_image
Top picks selected by the China Academy's editorial team from Chinese media, translated and edited to provide better insights into contemporary China.
Share This Post

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Comment
Cancel