China's Tianwen-2 has reached the near-Earth asteroid Kamoʻoalewa and begun mapping it ahead of a sample-collection attempt, with the capsule due back on Earth in late 2027. Success would make China the third space power to return asteroid material — and advance a field Luxembourg entered early through its 2017 space-resources law.
The UN-backed Asteroid Day, run from Luxembourg, returned to the capital on 26-27 June with retired NASA astronaut Mike Foreman among the guests — a public showcase that doubles as a stocktake of the Grand Duchy's decade-old bet on space resources, the Luxembourg Space Agency, SES and a European space cluster.
Mission Space, a space-weather forecasting start-up listed in the Luxembourg Space Agency's directory, launched its first Zohar sensor in March 2025 and is building toward a 24-node orbital constellation — offering a tangible test of Luxembourg's nearly decade-long bet on the space economy.