Japan’s Hayabusa2 doing risky research

TOKYO: Japan’s space agency said yesterday that its Hayabusa2 spacecraft will follow-up last month’s touchdown on a distant asteroid with another risky mission – to drop an explosive to make a crater and collect underground samples to get possible clues to the origin of the solar system.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said Hayabusa2 is to drop a copper impactor the size of a baseball and weighing 2kg on the asteroid on April 5 to collect samples from deeper underground, where they had not been exposed to the sun or space rays.