The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 abandons the explosive on Ryugu asteroid

TOKYO (AP) – The Japanese space agency has announced that its spacecraft Hayabusa2 has dropped an explosive designed to create a crater on an asteroid and collect its underground samples to find possible clues about the origin of the system solar.

The Friday mission in the crater is the most risky for Hayabusa2, who must immediately escape to avoid being hit by shrapnel from the explosion.

The JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, said Hayabusa2 had dropped a "small cabin impactor" on the asteroid on Friday morning, and that data confirmed that the spacecraft had been evacuated safely and was remained intact. The JAXA analyzes the data to determine if or how the impactor has created a crater.

The explosive copper has the size of a baseball weighing 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds). It was designed to come out of a cone-shaped equipment. A copper plate on its bottom was to turn into a ball during its descent and sneak into the asteroid at a speed of 2 kilometers per second.

The JAXA plans to return Hayabusa2 to the site later, once the dust and debris has been retained, to observe from above and collect underground samples that have not been exposed to the sun nor to the rays of space. Scientists hope that the samples will be crucial in determining the history of the asteroid and our planet.

If successful, it would be the first time that a spaceship would take away such materials. In 2005, during a "deep impact" mission on a comet, NASA observed fragments after blasting but did not collect them.

After dropping the impactor, the spacecraft had to move quickly to the other side of the asteroid to avoid flying shards from the blast. While moving away, Hayabusa2 also left a camera to capture the result. One of his first photos showed that the impactor had been released successfully and was heading towards the asteroid.

"So far, Hayabusa2 has done everything we can and we are delighted," said Chief of Mission Makoto Yoshikawa. "But we still have a lot of missions to accomplish and it's too early to celebrate with" banzai "."

Hayabusa2 successfully landed on a tiny flat surface of rock-block asteroid in February, when the satellite also collected surface dust and small debris. The craft is expected to leave the asteroid by the end of 2019 and bring back surface fragments and underground samples to Earth by the end of 2020.

The asteroid, named Ryugu after an underwater palace in a Japanese tale, lies about 300 million kilometers from Earth.