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Jason Davis • February 21, 2019
The Japanese space shuttle Hayabusa2 landed successfully on the surface of Ryugu! The landing took place about 35 minutes earlier than expected and even surprised some project scientists. During a live broadcast from the JAXA control room in Sagamihara, cheers suddenly burst, causing some initial confusion as to whether Hayabusa2 had actually landed. Shortly afterwards, via a superb Japanese-to-English translator who reported the show, a JAXA scientist said: "There have been some deviations from the simulation chart, but the result is that all Is going as planned. "
Hayabusa2
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The descent to Ryugu began February 21 at 4:45 pm UTC, 5 hours later than planned. The reason for the delay was not clear, but the mission controllers made up for lost time by sending Hayabusa2 to Ryugu at a speed of 90 centimeters per second instead of 40. At about the same time, images coming from Optical navigation cameras from the camera began to arrive. , and continued to do so until the space shuttle passed under 200 meters shortly after 22:02 UTC.
JAXA, Tokyo University, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University, Aizu University, AIST
Photo Ryugu Hayabusa2 during the sampling descent
Hayabusa2 took this photo with his optical navigation camera at an altitude of about 180 meters, before entering its final descent to take a sample of the Ryugu asteroid, on February 21, 2019.
At the 45 – meter stop point, Hayabusa2 's is heading towards the landing and removed its high – gain antenna from the Earth, thereby interrupting the telemetry flow. From there, the mission controllers could only monitor the Doppler changes in the Hayabusa2 low gain antenna signal, indicating that the probe had pushed its sampling horn into Ryugu and was starting to climb.
This change occurred at 22:49 UTC:
[TD1-L08E1] 2/22 to 7:49 JST. The Doppler data showed the expected behavior and the acclamations multiplied!
– [email protected] (@ haya2e_jaxa) February 21, 2019
A cry of joy broke out at the JAXA Mission Control Center:
JAXA
Celebration in the control room of the Hayabusa2 mission after Ryugu's successful touch
A bursting control room celebrates a subtle change in Hayabusa2's radio signal, marking the moment of his touchdown and sample capture on Ryugu on February 21, 2019 at 22:49 UTC.
Hayabusa2 started climbing, and a few minutes later, his high gain antenna was sent back to Earth. The mission controllers confirmed that the spacecraft was in good condition and that the order to fire the tantalum bullet was executed as planned.
The next step will be for JAXA to download images, particularly from the camera on the sample cornet, and to confirm that the handshake sequence went as planned. We will continue to update this article!
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