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We now know what it looks like when a spaceship lobes a bomb against an asteroid.
Earlier in April, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) had ordered its Hayabusa2 spacecraft to launch an explosive at Ryugu's asteroid about 1,500 meters above its surface .
Now, JAXA has released a video from the launch taken from the spacecraft point of view – and although the craft is hiding before the impact, the video still provides a surprisingly detailed look at the surface of the asteroid.
This video shows the descent of the SCI (small cabin impactor) made from captured images at 2 second intervals just after the separation of Hayabusa2 by the TIR thermal infrared camera. In the background, you can see Ryugu's surface at 500 meters. pic.twitter.com/O5niPDb2XI
– [email protected] (@ haya2e_jaxa) April 21, 2019
According to a press release from the European Space Agency, mission researchers are waiting for the attack to create a "distinctive crater" on Ryugu.
They hope to recover some of the underground material dislodged by the bombing in order to be able to analyze it on Earth after the return of the land-based spacecraft.
The plan now is to send Hayabusa2 to the scene of the asteroid bombardment on Thursday to investigate and take pictures – so we may not know what a bombed-out asteroid looks like, we may not be able to wait very long to know it.
This article was originally published by Futurism. Read the original article.
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