Image Credits: Go Miyazaki
The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), on Saturday, confirmed that they had managed to land two small robotic probes on the surface of a near Earth asteroid called Ryugu, a 1 kilometer wide space rock, shaped like a diamond.
The mission began on 3 December 2014 when the agency launched the Hayabusa2 spacecraft on a journey towards Ryugu, some 289 million kilometres away from Earth.
The spacecraft completed the journey on 27 June 2018 when it rendezvoused with the asteroid and spent the next few months tailing it at a distance of 20 km to study and map the asteroid.
On 21 September 2018, the spacecraft launched two small rovers both weighing just about 1.1 kg, towards the surface of Ryugu which landed on 22 September.
The Mission?
Image Credits: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
There are lots of unanswered questions about the origns of life and our solar system itself. That's why scientists want to study asteroids that have virtually remain unchanged since the birth of our solar system.
This, they hope, would give them a clue about the conditions present then and perhaps an idea of how the solar system formed and if life was brought to Earth from one of these asteroids. The mission to Ryugu aims to gather some of those clues too.
The two tiny rovers are designed to hop around on the asteroid (in a world's first) which has a weak gravity, allowing them to jump upto 49 feet above the surface and remain airborne for up to 15 minutes. They will take photographs, collect data about the various metrics and send all of it to Earth.
In fact, the rovers have already sent 3 photos, one of which you can see above. It sure looks like a distant lonely place out there in the vastness of space.
Future Objectives
Image Credits: JGarry
Tha launching of the two tiny rovers is just the beginning of the mission as far as studying the asteroid goes. On 3 October, another larger rover named MASCOT will land on the surface as well with its own host of scientific instruments to collect various data.
Then, at the end of October, the main Hayabusa2 spacecraft, will blow a crater of approximately 2 metres in diameter on the surface of Ryugu to reveal and gather samples from the pristine materials beneath it that have remained unchanged for billions of years.
In December 2019, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft will depart from Ryugu towards Earth with the samples and will probably reach here in December of 2020. The scientists on ground will then begin analysing the samples.
Exploring asteroids is crucial for our greater understanding of space, the history of the solar system, even origins of life and I only wonder what we might discover, thanks to these space rocks.