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At the end of August, the Japanese space agency JAXA announced that it would try to deploy a pair of very special rovers, the asteroid Ryugu, on the surface. JAXA's Probe Hayabusa-2 spent years traveling on the asteroid and, at the scheduled time, Probe launched a pair of incredibly unique rovers to inspect the asteroid.
The probes were released from the "Hayabusa-2" spacecraft and if all went as planned, they would have moved to land on the dusty surface of the asteroid. Unfortunately, JAXA engineers will have to wait a few days to receive confirmation that the rovers are ready to perform their scientific tasks.
"We have a lot of hope. We have no confirmation yet, but we are very, very optimistic, "said Yuichi Tsuda of JAXA. "I can not wait to see pictures. I want to see space images seen from the surface of the asteroid.
What makes the rovers particularly interesting is that they look nothing like robotic vehicles that you usually see on Mars. Instead of rolling wheels, the rovers will actually jump to new places on the rock when they move. The vehicles will propel nearly 50 feet into the sky before descending gently to the surface thanks to Ryugu's gentle gravitational pull.
But Hayabusa-2 is second to none. The spacecraft will soon explode a large crater in Ryugu and then probe the freshly exposed material to study the composition of the rock itself.
Later, a cube filled with tools called MASCOT will be sent to the asteroid to transmit a multitude of readings to JAXA. Eventually, the Hayabusa-2 mission will see the spacecraft return samples of asteroids to Earth, but this will not happen until 2020.
Source of the picture: JAXA
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