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China's Tianwen-2 Orbits Earth's Quasi-Moon as New Research Challenges Its Lunar Origin

China's Tianwen-2 spacecraft reached quasi-satellite 469219 Kamoʻoalewa on June 7, 2026, marking China's first in-situ rendezvous with a near-Earth object. The mission will collect surface samples before departing in April 2027. A newly published Nature Communications paper challenges the prevailing hypothesis that Kamoʻoalewa is a lunar fragment, finding instead that its reflectance spectrum is better matched by ultra-highly space-weathered LL chondrite material from the Flora asteroid family.