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He surprised, dazzled, then disappeared in a flash. In the wee hours of Sunday morning local time, the sample capsule from Japan Hayabusa2 spaceship roamed the atmosphere of the Australian mining town of Coober Pedy, blazing a fleeting trail of fire across the sky.
Above the Lookout Cave Motel in the city center, just before 4 a.m. local time (9:30 p.m. PT), a dozen people gathered and mingled. Tripods were erected and photographic equipment was brought into focus and pointed skyward. Then, without a sound, a sparkling point of light appeared in the darkness. It moved quickly. The crowd erupted with “oohs” and some pointed their phones at the sky.
Among those who were impressed with the show were Ross, 34, of Townsville, and his two sons, Max, 6, and Chase, 8. “It was pretty cool,” Ross said. “It was worth getting up early.”
The very first subsurface sample of an asteroid is enclosed in the capsule. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) confirmed that the 16-inch container landed on the flat, ocher plains of the Woomera No-Go Zone more than 200 miles southeast of Coober Pedy about 4 37 h local time (10:07 a.m.). PT, Saturday).
The landing is the culmination of a decade of work by scientists and engineers at JAXA, and it comes six years after Hayabusa2, which is roughly the size of a washing machine, left Earth. The spacecraft has traveled more than 3.2 billion kilometers on its journey to near-Earth asteroid Ryugu and back, spending more than a year using specialized cameras, radar and an infrared imager to monitor the rock in the shape of a spinning top. Twice in 2019, it collected surface samples during brief pull-out maneuvers.
Masaki Fujimoto, Deputy Director of JAXA’s Institute for Space and Astronautical Sciences (ISAS), says the mission was one of the defining moments in his life, and by the end it was evident that the stunning finale and the salvage operations would be bittersweet. .
“This is the last time we’ll all be together,” said Fujimoto.
There is still work to be done, starting with making sure the contents of the capsule are safe. The recovery mission took place in the darkness before dawn of the outback and confirmation of the capsule collection is still pending.
Adventure in the Outback
The Australian Space Agency and the Department of Defense (DOD) played an important role in the safe return of the capsule. The DOD manages the Woomera Prohibited Zone (WPA), a huge expanse of land, about half the size of the UK, where the capsule was guided after it left Hayabusa2 on Saturday. Road closures prevented residents from crossing the area for nearly 12 hours, as a precaution.
JAXA engineers constricted the final landing zone to an area about a tenth of this size, with some skillful maneuvering as the spacecraft returned to Earth.
The sample entered Earth’s atmosphere traveling at about 7.5 miles per second, but when it struck the dense atmosphere, it slowed to about 110 meters per second, throwing down its heat shield and deploying its parachute. After hovering for about 20 minutes, it landed on the WPA’s Mars-like Red Plains.
To help locate the sample capsule, members of the Defense Force attached themselves to it as it began to burn in the atmosphere, following it with ground cameras and radar. This allowed the JAXA team to locate the sample and send their team of helicopters to fly and retrieve it at around 4:47 a.m. local time. The very first person ever to have the honor of touching the capsule was a security guard, says Satoru Nakazawa, who led the recovery mission.
Once the capsule was acquired, the recovery team quickly transported it to a pop-up lab in the Woomera range of operations, known as the Quick Look Facility or QLF.
What’s in the box?
The team predicts that Hayabusa2 collected about a gram of material from Ryugu, based on observations from the spacecraft’s cameras. Confirmation of exactly what was caught in the two Hayabusa2 heists is expected in the coming weeks.
JAXA’s specialized research team located the capsule at around 5:34 a.m. local time and returned it to the QLF for testing. According to JAXA’s Hayabusa2 Twitter account, all operations were completed at 6:01 am local time (11:31 am Pacific time). “The operation was perfect,” the tweet read.
Hajime Yano, an ISAS scientist, says the sampling capsule will not be opened until it is returned to the ISAS facility in Japan. However, a device capable of measuring small amounts of gas in a sample was erected in the QLF to perform the first analysis of the capsule.
The facility includes a clean room and staff are to be dressed from head to toe in protective gear – not because of concern about disease from long-dormant alien asteroids or even COVID-19[female[feminine, but to protect the sample from contamination. After returning, Yano and his team pierced the bottom of the capsule to detect any residual gas. A preliminary analysis will allow researchers to tell whether Hayabusa2 was successful in pulling chunks of rock and debris from Ryugu’s surface.
Fujimoto says the capsule will be forced to open in Japan sometime on December 20. The contents of the capsule should improve our understanding of the first solar system and the Earth.
Earlier observations of Ryugu by Hayabusa2 suggested that there were traces of minerals containing water in the asteroid. Some scientists believe that perhaps this is how water was brought to the Earth’s surface and, potentially, how organic matter rained down on the early planet and kickstarted life.
Return to Woomera
Many members of the JAXA team will now turn their attention to Phobos and Deimos, two moons of Mars. The Mars Moon Exploration Mission (MMX) is expected to launch in 2024 and would likely return a sample obtained from the surface of Phobos by 2029.
The mission will include partnerships with NASA, the French Space Agency and the European Space Agency (ESA). It is also likely to feature another key partner: Australia. While not officially confirmed, Fujimoto has hinted that these samples will also land in the outback.
“With my experience this time around, I’m very inclined to have Woomera as a landing point,” he said. “We want to continue to collaborate.”
Fujimoto says the interests of JAXA and the interests of the Australian Space Agency are closely linked. Megan Clark, head of the Australian Space Agency, is excited to continue relations between Japan and Australia, allowing the country’s fledgling agency to continue to grow.
“International partnerships are essential for us,” she said. “We cannot transform our own space industry and create jobs here without the depth of international partnerships.”
Hayabusa2’s sample return mission is complete, but the spacecraft has not been removed. JAXA engineers and scientists will target the spacecraft at two more asteroids over the next decade. And there may be another Hayabusa mission in the works. JAXA staff have hinted that the duology may become a trilogy in the future. Will we see a Hayabusa3? It’s a separate possibility.
A press conference detailing the sample recovery operation is scheduled for 11 p.m. PT Saturday with Megan Clark, Fujimoto and other JAXA representatives. You can find the feed below.
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