China extends its reach into the Solar System with launch of asteroid mission

A Chinese spacecraft built to collect specimens from an unexplored asteroid and return them to Earth successfully launched Wednesday from a military-run spaceport in the country’s mountainous interior.

Liftoff aboard a Long March 3B rocket at 1:31 pm EDT (17:31 UTC) from the Xichang launch base kicked off the second mission in a series of Chinese probes to explore the Solar System.…

This data comes from the ChinaPulse.com media intelligence and smart news insights monitoring platform.