In a first, Japanese robots land on moving asteroid
pair of robot rovers have landed on an asteroid and begun a survey, Japan’s space agency said, as it conducts a mission aiming to shed light on the origins of the solar system.
The rover mission marks the world’s first moving, robotic observation of an asteroid surface, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The round, cookie tinshaped robots successfully reached the Ryugu asteroid a day after they were released from the Hayabusa2 probe, the agency said. “Each of the rovers is operating normally and has started surveying Ryugu’s surface,” JAXA said in a statement.
Taking advantage of the asteroid’s low gravity, the rovers will jump around on the surface, soaring as high as 15 metres and staying in the air for as long as 15 minutes, to survey the asteroid’s
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physical features. “I am so proud that we have established a new method of space exploration for small celestial bodies,” said JAXA project manager Yuichi Tsuda. The agency tried but failed in 2005 to land a rover on another asteroid.
Hayabusa2 will next month deploy an “impactor” that will explode above the asteroid, shooting a two-kilo (four-pound) copper object to blast a small cra- ter into the surface.
From this crater, the probe will collect “fresh” materials unexposed to millennia of wind and radiation, hoping for answers to some fundamental questions about life and the universe, including whether elements from space helped give rise to life on Earth. The probe will also release a French-German landing vehicle named the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT).