Japan robots start asteroid survey

Japanese supply ship heads to space station after delays

TOKYA, Sept 23, (Agencies): A pair of robot rovers have landed on an asteroid and begun a survey, Japan’s space agency said Saturday, 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 tin-shaped 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 (49 feet) and staying in the air for as long as 15 minutes – to survey the asteroid’s 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 in a similar mission.

Hayabusa2 will next month deploy an “impactor” that will explode above the asteroid, shooting a two-kilo (fourpound) copper object to blast a small crater 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) for surface observation.

Hayabusa2, about the size of a large fridge and equipped with solar panels, is the successor to JAXA’s first asteroid explorer, Hayabusa – Japanese for falcon.

That probe returned from a smaller, potato-shaped, asteroid in 2010 with dust samples despite various setbacks during its epic seven-year odyssey and was hailed as a scientific triumph. Experiments The Hayabusa2 mission was launched in December 2014 and will return to Earth with its samples in 2020.

Meanwhile an unmanned Japanese space capsule is headed to the International Space Station filled with cargo including food, experiments and new batteries.

The craft was launched Sunday at 2:52 am from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan. It will take 4-1/2 days to reach the space station.

The launch was delayed for about two weeks because of bad weather and a mechanical problem.

The delay has led NASA to postpone two space walks to install the six lithium-ion batteries until new crew members arrive next month. They will replace aging nickel-hydrogen batteries for the station’s electric power, enabling an extension of its operations.

The supply ship is a 9-meter- (30foot-) long cylinder that will be retrieved by the space station’s robotic arm. It is named Kounotori, which means white stork.

The 5,500 kilograms (12,000 pounds) of cargo includes racks and equipment for experiments and an experimental re-entry capsule to try to demonstrate a novel technology to bring back samples from the space station.

Once it is unloaded, the supply craft will be filled with trash and sent Earthward. It will be destroyed when it reenters the atmosphere.

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Russia’s space agency chief said Saturday that it wouldn’t accept a second-tier role in a NASAled plan to build an outpost near the moon, but Roscosmos spokesman quickly clarified that Russia is still staying in the project.

Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying that Russia wouldn’t be reduced to a junior partner in the NASA-led project to build the lunar orbital platform called the Gateway in the 2020s.

“I believe that Russia can’t afford itself to participate in other countries’ project on second-tier roles,” Rogozin said when asked about the Gateway during a meeting with young space engineers, according to Tass.

He noted that Russia was working to develop heavy-lift rockets that would allow it to build its own orbital platform near the moon, possibly in cooperation with some BRICS countries – a grouping that includes Brazil, China, India and South Africa along with Russia.

A few hours later, Roscosmos spokesman Vladimir Ustimenko clarified that Rogozin didn’t mean to say Russia was bailing out of the NASAled project.

“Russia hasn’t refused to take part in the project of the lunar orbital station together with the United States,” Ustimenko was quoted by Tass as saying. He added “we stand for equal, partnership-style cooperation.”