After ESA-Rosetta managed the incredible Phila landing on a comet in 2014, these days are full of photos and news of the amazing achievement of the Hayabusa 2. On 21 September, the Japanese probe successfully released two robotic rovers on the surface of the asteroid Ryugu, after a three-and-a-half-year journey.
The robots, Rover 1A and Rover 1B, are in nominal conditions and already working on the surface of the space rock.
“This asteroid probe is the sequel to the Hayabusa probe, designed for returning asteroid samples. By investigating a different type of asteroid (type C) from the Itokawa asteroid (type S) that was the target of Hayabusa, Hayabusa 2 will explore not only the origins of the planets but also the origin of the water of Earth’s oceans and the source of life,” says ISAS, the Japanese space agency.
“Hayabusa 2 aims to examine the Ryugu asteroid (162173). Ryugu is a type C asteroid, but it is believed that there were organic matter and water on the asteroid when the solar system was created (roughly 4.6 billion years ago) and that these still exist. The second goal of Hayabusa 2 is to solve questions such as where the Earth’s water came from and where the organic matter which makes up life was created. Still another goal of Hayabusa 2 is to examine how the planets were created through the collision, destruction, and combination of the planetesimals which are thought to have been created first. In short, Hayabusa 2 is a mission designed to elucidate the secrets of the creation of life and the birth of the solar system.” [Read the whole story here]
Watch Hayabusa 2 in action:
Amazing, just amazing… Thank you so much for sharing this! 🙂
It is… and more it’s to come 🙂
I had no idea that Japan was doing this. Wow. Will they be the first to establish mining operations on asteroids?
I’m not sure, simply because Japan is driven by different interests here and the country doesn’t have a domestic law on this point, differently, for example, from the USA and Belgium-Lux. Let’s see that happens 🙂