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The robot robot Hayabusa 2 arrived on Wednesday at the Asteroid Ryugu, a diamond-shaped object. half a mile wide where the spacecraft will attempt a brief landing later this year to collect rock samples for return to Earth.
After crawling up to the asteroid at an ever slow rate, the Hayabusa 2 shuttle's propellers stopped its approach Wednesday at a distance of about 12 miles, or 20 kilometers, depending on Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
The milestone marked the conclusion of a three-and-a-half-year trip covering nearly 2 billion miles (3.2 billion kilometers) since the launch of Hayabusa 2 from the south of Japan on an H-2A rocket in December 2014.
The space probe and the asteroid Ryugu, seen closely for the first time, are currently located about 177 million miles (28 5 million kilometers) from Earth. Under remote control of engineers and scientists in Japan, Hayabusa 2 will spend the next few weeks monitoring Ryugu, approaching a sequence of maneuvers to obtain high-resolution images and data on the gravitational field of the asteroid
is now revealed, "writes Yuichi Tsuda, project manager at Hayabusa 2 at JAXA. "From a distance, the Ryugu appeared at first round, then gradually transformed into a square before becoming a beautiful form similar to fluorite [known as the ‘firefly stone’ in Japanese]." Now the craters are visible, the rocks are visible and the geographical features are different place to place, "wrote Tsuda." This form of Ryugu is scientifically surprising and also poses some engineering challenges. "
Hayabusa 2 will try to capture at least one gram of Ryugu rock samples during three landing landing attempts, from the beginning of October. At the end of 2019, the spacecraft will leave the ship. Asteroid and will be heading towards Earth, dropping his return box for a parachute-assisted landing in South Australia in December 2020.
Scientists say Ryugu's rotation is perpendicular to its orbit, which is a good news for plans to roll out a series of undercarriages and small rovers on the asteroid, starting with the deployment in October of the 22-kilogram MASCOT vehicle developed by German and French engineers.
The asteroid completes a rotation every 7.6 hours, and its orbit takes it around the sun once every 1.3 years. Ryugu's orbit crosses the path of the Earth around the sun, making it a potentially dangerous asteroid.
"On the other hand, there is a peak in the vicinity of the equator and a large number of craters Tsuda wrote:
The shape of the Ryugu also suggests that it can have an irregular gravity field, estimated to be about 60,000 times weaker than that of the Earth, according to Tsuda.
"The project The team is fascinated by the appearance of Ryugu and the morale rises to the prospect of this challenge, "writes Tsuda." With all of you, we became the first witnesses of the Ryugu asteroid. I feel this incredible honor in carrying out the operations of the mission.
All Hayabusa 2 scientific instruments are working as intended. The sensors include a camera, a laser designed to measure topography, and a near-infrared spectrometer to study Ryugu's composition.
"At the end of July, we will be closer than 5 kilometers to the surface, so we will have much more detailed surface images," said Makoto Yoshikawa, Hayabusa 2 Mission Manager, in an interview. at Spaceflight Now at the beginning of this month. "Also, in August, we will measure the gravity of the Ryugu, and in this case we will send the spacecraft 1 kilometer (about 3,300 feet) from the surface."
After the 39 initial survey, Japanese scientists will decide in August where to send Hayabusa 2 to collect the first of three Ryugu samples.
Hayabusa 2 will not go into orbit around Ryugu. Instead, the probe will follow Trajectories around the asteroid, in the same way that a rendezvous spaceship approaches the International Space Station
The telescopic camera of the spacecraft also scanned the moons and other debris accompanying Ryugu, but found no trace of companion.
Yoshikawa said that sampling maneuvers will be the most risky part of the Hayabusa 2 mission.
"The hardest part is to get the sample," he said. Yoshikawa told BBC News. "It's a little risky because we can not operate from Earth because there is a delay, so the spacecraft has to move by itself." The spaceship has functions autonomous, but it's very risky because Ryugu's surface is not so smooth. "
We have three (planned) touchdowns," he said. "The first is perhaps to be in October. The second is perhaps next year in February or March.
"So we have two chances, and one more," he told BBC News. "Hayabusa 2 has an impactor that will create a small crater on the surface of the asteroid.If we can make a small crater, then the spacecraft will land at the crater to recover underground material."
Hayabusa 2 is one of two robotic asteroid missions arriving at distant objects this year. NASA's OSIRIS-REx satellite, launched in September 2016, is expected to arrive at the Bennu asteroid on Dec. 3 to collect its own samples to bring back to Earth
Hayabusa 2 follows the Japanese mission Hayabusa, which collects less than one Sample milligram of rock-like Asteroid S Itokawa in 2005 and brings the material back to Earth in 2010. But Hayabusa many difficulties, including a fuel leak and a malfunction of its mechanism. sampling, which allowed him to collect much less material than expected.
"Hayabusa was a technology demonstrator, his main focus was technology," Yoshikawa said in an interview with Spaceflight Now. "For Hayabusa 2, science is the main goal.It's the big difference."
Ryugu is a primitive C-type asteroid that contains organic materials that scientists believe to be remnants of the birth of the system "For both missions, we wanted to learn about the origins of the solar system, but for Hayabusa 2, we want to understand the organic matter and water at the beginning of the solar system," Yoshikawa said. "This is the major point of science."
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