The Hayabusa2 of Japan photography like never before

After traveling in the darkness of the cosmos for about four years, the Japanese Space Agency's (JAXA) spacecraft spacecraft Hayabusa2 is getting closer to its target – a remote asteroid named Ryugu – and provides the first images that reveal its shape and surface characteristics.

The spacecraft, which flew nearly 280 million kilometers from the sky, is part of a sampling mission aimed at landing on the distant space object, retrieving surface samples and returning on Earth, like its predecessor, the original Hayabusa mission, has made an asteroid called Itokawa.

Images of Ryugu asteroids by ONC-W1. The photograph was taken on June 24, 2018 at around 3:00 pm EST and shows part of the camera's wide field of view. Photo: JAXA, University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University, Aizu University, AIST

Asteroid Ryugu has been classified as a potentially dangerous near-Earth object or NEO because of its orbital trajectory that can bring the object strangely close to Earth in the future. However, despite a bunch of asteroids with bizarre shapes in the cosmos, astronomers and sky observers thought that the 3000 foot wide object was round.

The idea completely changed when Hayabusa2 arrived within 200 kilometers of the object and took a series of images, taking a look at its exact shape. Essentially as the spacecraft approached, the asteroid, which looked like a ball originally, began to take the form of a square object and s & # 39; It is finally revealed to be a dice or a space object resembling a diamond. Yuichi Tsuda, the project director, compared the structure to a piece of mineral fluorite or perhaps to a pearl of abacus.

The images, taken on June 24 at a distance of about 40 kilometers, also revealed craters, rock formations and other geographical features prevalent on the surface of the asteroid.

Asteroid Ryugu photographed by the ONC-T on June 24, 2018, around 00:01 JST. Photo: JAXA, University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University, Aizu University, AIST

According to a statement from the agency, this, combined with other related items, will help mission controllers determine where the lorry of the spacecraft and three mini-rovers should be landed and deployed.

"The axis of rotation of the asteroid is perpendicular to the orbit," Tsuda said in the statement. "This fact increases the degrees of freedom of landing and the decent operations of the rover". However, he adds, there is "a peak in the vicinity of the equator and a large number of craters, which makes the selection of landing points interesting and difficult."

Even the form of the object will have a role to play in the future functioning of the mission. According to the researchers, unlike the Earth and the Moon, the diamond shape of this asteroid will change the way gravity acts there. Meaning, its direction will not point directly down into large areas of the space rock.

"So we need a detailed study of these properties to formulate our future mining plans," Tsuda added.

Once the samples are collected, the spacecraft will start its return journey and return home by the end of 2020. The work is important because it is thought that space rocks of this size were formed from more big body parents. This means a follow-up work after the recovery of the sample could provide additional insight into the history of our solar system and the organs that were first.