Spacecraft to study asteroid
Japan’s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft has finally reached its destination – an asteroid called Ryugu – after travelling 180 million miles since launching in December 2014 from the Tanegashima Space Center. Its mission is to blast a hole in the asteroid, gather up fragments and bring them back to Earth for analysis.
Ryugu is a diamond-shaped asteroid that is just over half a mile long. It sits in an orbit between Earth and Mars. Asteroids like Ryugu have been around since the formation of the solar system around
4.6 billion years ago, so they can tell scientists a lot about the raw materials from which the planets formed. They contain water, organic compounds (the kind of molecules made by living things on Earth) and precious metals, such as platinum. “Comets and asteroids are the dinosaur bones of the solar system. They were here first,” says Carey Lisse, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University, in the US. Some experts believe that chemicals found on asteroids could have kick-started life on Earth.
Japan’s spacecraft is currently around 25 miles away from Ryugu but it will slowly edge closer over the next month. In August, when it is less than a mile away, the spacecraft will launch four small landers to study the surface of the asteroid and see what it is made of. Over the course of its mission, Hayabusa-2 will set itself down on the asteroid’s surface three times to collect samples. The spacecraft carries a 2.5-kilogram copper “bullet” that it will drive into the surface using high explosives, creating a new crater in the surface.
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency believes that digging underground will give them samples that haven’t been damaged by the harsh environment of space. Hayabusa-2 will orbit the asteroid for 18 months, then return to Earth in 2020 with the samples.