Hayabusa2: Japanese robots land on world-moving asteroid | Science

Two robots from the Japanese Space Agency landed on a moving asteroid and began an investigation as part of a mission to shed light on the origins of the solar system.

According to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the mobile mission represents the first robotic observation in motion of the surface of an asteroid.

The agency said the cookie-shaped tin shaped robots had successfully landed on the Ryugu asteroid the day after their release from the Hayabusa probe2.

"Each of the rovers is functioning normally and has begun to study Ryugu's surface," JAXA said Saturday in a statement.

The robots will take advantage of the asteroid's low gravity, jumping to the surface, reaching up to 15 meters (49 feet) and remaining in the air for 15 minutes, to examine the physical characteristics of the asteroid.

"I am so proud that we have established a new space exploration method for small celestial bodies," said Yuichi Tsuda, JAXA Project Manager.

The agency tried but failed to land a rover on another asteroid during a similar mission in 2005.

In October, the Hayabusa2 probe will deploy an "impactor" that will explode over the asteroid, firing a 2-kg copper missile to detonate a small crater in the surface.

From this crater, the probe will collect "cool" materials not exposed to millennia of winds and radiation, hoping for answers to some fundamental questions about life and the universe, including the contribution of space to the life on Earth.

The probe will also release a Franco-German landing vehicle called MASCOT (Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout) for surface observation.

Hayabusa2, the size of a large refrigerator and equipped with solar panels, is the successor of JAXA's first asteroid explorer, Hayabusa – the Japanese for the hawk.

This probe returned from a smaller, potato-shaped asteroid in 2010 with dust samples, despite various failures during its seven-year epic odyssey, and was hailed as a scientific triumph.

The Hayabusa2 mission was launched in December 2014 and will return to Earth with its samples in 2020.