Two spacecraft deliver stunning new close-up photos of asteroids

Within just three days of each other, Chinese and Japanese spacecraft got up close and personal with two different asteroids. The China National Space Administration sent Tianwen-2 to visit Kamo'oalewa, a 300-foot-wide rock some call a quasi-moon of Earth, on July 2. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, aka JAXA, sent its Hayabusa2 spacecraft by a 1,500-foot-wide space rock dubbed Torifune on July 5. The missions, which each scored photos of their targets, show a thirst for knowledge about these dinosaur killers and how to potentially stop them, should one ever be on a collision course with our planet. Though neither of these so-called near-Earth asteroids is a threat, scientists and engineers hope to use these and other close encounters to prepare for potential dangerous ones in the future. In a post on X, the European Space Agency congratulated both space programs for their successes while promoting its own Hera mission, a robotic spacecraft on its way to visit Dimorphos, the asteroid NASA's DART mission intentionally slammed into for asteroid target practice in 2022. Asteroids are the ancient detritus leftover from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago