Hayabusa2 lands on an asteroid and shoots him

Today in an extended Twitter feed Following the press conference that followed, the Hayabusa2 team of JAXA announced that everything had gone well to collect an asteroid sample for its possible return to Earth. We do not know the material yet, but the Japanese probe has successfully executed all the commands associated with the recovery of the sample.

Hayabusa2 has been in space since 2014 and has slowly been moving towards an orbit of 20 km above the surface of the Ryugu asteroid. At the end of 2018, the spacecraft approached the asteroid and launched two small solar powered robots that had jumped to the surface ever since. This week saw the first of what should be several attempts to collect samples.

The procedure to follow is quite simple: Hayabusa2 snuggles against the asteroid and pulls it. The probe has a "horn" sample collection that it can place against the surface of the asteroid. Once in place, Hayabusa2 can fire a bullet into the surface of the asteroid, exploding the material that will be picked up by the horn and stored for return to Earth. JAXA, the Japanese space agency, describes its weapon as a "projector" but admits that what it fires is a bullet. The JAXA has a webpage that describes some tests on Earth of the entire system.

This obviously requires that Hayabusa2 leaves its orbit 20 km away and approaches the asteroid. The approach is rather cautious, with an initial speed of 145 meters / hour, slowing to 36 m / h during the final stages, which means that traveling 20 km took a considerable time. The Hayabusa2 surveillance team, however, confirmed that all planned commands during the approach had been executed correctly, indicating that Hayabusa2 now carries the first of several asteroid samples.

The initial samples will be the surface material, which has been exposed to radiation and high energy particles, probably since the formation of the solar system. But Hayabusa2 also carries a heavier bullet designed to explode the surface material to expose the material that has remained protected for billions of years. Ryugu is thought to be rich in water and organic matter and could provide a control capsule for the study of these starting materials before their incorporation into planets and moons.