China's bold new mission could provide a financial boost alongside scientific benefits, as the National Space Administration aims to retrieve part of a nearby asteroid worth $538,782,000,000.
New technology and research has allowed the world's most prominent space agencies to ramp up their exploration efforts, as countries like Japan and the United States have sent missions to far-off planets to see what can be found and retrieved.
There are talks of NASA capturing a famous astroid that could give every single person on Earth a significant amount of money if shared equally, and China's new target could provide a similar boost of fortunes if successful.
As reported by Reuters, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) has launched a new mission to retrieve samples from an astroid found (relatively) close to Earth, and it would be just the third nation to achieve such a feat.
What asteroid will China be retrieving samples from?
While the United States only recently sourced parts of the Bennu asteroid as part of its OSIRIS-REx mission, China's Tianwen-2 spacecraft has set its course for a small nearby asteroid named 469219 Kamoʻoalewa.
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This floating space rock is estimated ot be between 40 and 100 meters wide, and is found roughly between 9 million and 24 million miles from Earth depending on the stage or orbit. It is expected that Tianwen-2 will reach 469219 Kamoʻoalewa by around July 2026.
This is around 38 times further than the distance between Earth and the Moon based on the closest estimate, so it's understandable why it takes so long for a high-speed shuttle to reach this highly-desired destination.
Experts estimate that one of the biggest challenges of this mission will be actually landing the spacecraft on the astroid, as its gravity is far lower than that of the Moon where China have spent a lot of time practicing on.
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One it has successfully landed on 469219 Kamoʻoalewa though, Tianwen-2 will then conduct in-depth analysis of the materials on the astroid, and then shoot a capture back towards Earth with samples inside, which will land around November 2027.
Tianwen-2's journey doesn't stop there though, as it will then continue on in an attempt to reach main-belt comet 311P/PanSTARRS, which is around 87 million miles away from Earth.
How much is 469219 Kamoʻoalewa worth?
While the predominant reason for reaching and extracting materials from 469219 Kamoʻoalewa is the scientific research that will be conducted, it turns out that it actually holds significant financial value, with estimates reaching $538,782,000,000.
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This is due to the materials that make up the asteroid, which like many others include precious and valuable metals that can be worth a lot back on Earth. 469219 Kamoʻoalewa isn't expected to be among some of the most valuable of its kind, but its sheer size allows it to total into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Of course, CNSA is only extracting a miniscule amount of the total weight as a sample, and any kind of large-scale mining operation would be utterly impractical due to the sheer distance from Earth, but it goes to show quite how valuable rocks simply floating through space can be back on our home planet.