Chang’e 2 and the 2012 Toutatis flyby

A lunar orbiter that went on to visit L2 and then made China’s first asteroid encounter.

Published 2026-10-23

Chang’e 2 was built to orbit the Moon. Its finest moment came after that job was done.^[4]

From the Moon to L2

After its lunar mission, the probe left the Moon for the Sun–Earth L2 point, entering orbit there on 25 August 2011 — making China the third space agency to visit that point.^[4]

Heading for Toutatis

On 15 April 2012, Chang’e 2 departed L2 for asteroid 4179 Toutatis.^[4] The timing worked because Toutatis was making one of its regular passes near Earth in December 2012.^[2]

The flyby

On 13 December 2012, at 08:30:09 GMT, Chang’e 2 passed as close as 3.2 km at a relative speed of 10.73 km/s. Published images reached up to about 10 m per pixel.^[4]

What it showed

The images showed Toutatis is not a monolith but most likely a coalescence of shattered fragments, with a small lobe (“head”) and a large lobe (“body”). Neither part is round, and both have large facets.^[2]

A milestone

The encounter made the China National Space Administration the fourth space agency to explore an asteroid directly, after NASA, ESA and JAXA.^[4] Contact was lost in 2014 as the signal weakened with distance; the probe is expected to return to Earth’s vicinity around 2027.^[4]

Numbered citations link to the sources list on the Toutatis overview page.