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The Hayabusa 2 spacecraft casts a shadow over the Ryugu asteroid as it approaches to deploy two rovers to the surface of the tiny space rock. (JAXA)
On a primitive piece of space rock more than 100 million kilometers from Earth, two tiny robotic explorers made their first cautious "jumps" this weekend – the first movements made by a human space ship on the surface of the Earth. an asteroid.
The twin engines were dropped on Friday at the top of the Ryugu asteroid by their spacecraft, the Japanese space agency Hayabusa 2. The next day, the JAXA shared an impressionistic image of the landing site: the Ryugu tombstone illuminated by a brilliant sun ray.
The rovers – nicknamed MINERVA-II 1a and 1b – each have the size and shape of a cookie tin. The internal rotors powered by solar energy project them into the asteroid's low gravity, allowing them to propel themselves on their surface to take pictures and take temperature data.
"I can not find words to express how happy I am," project director Yuichi Tsuda said in a statement after confirmation of the rovers' arrival.
In the coming months, the MINERVA-II rovers will be joined by two other undercarriages. Hayabusa 2 will also break up the asteroid with explosives to destroy part of its surface, exposing underground materials that the spacecraft will eventually collect and return to Earth. If everything goes as planned, this will be the first mission to return a sample of a type C asteroid, which is often compared to the early days of solar system time capsules, there are more than 4 billion. ; years.
An artist illustration of Rover-1A, Background and Rover-1B while they explore the surface of Ryugu. (JAXA) (JAXA HANDOUT / EPA-EFE / REX / Shutterstock / Document Jaxa / Epa-Efe / Rex / Shutterstock)
Ryugu owes its name to a magical palace at the bottom of the sea where a fisherman is assigned a mysterious box in a Japanese folk tale.
"The Hayabusa 2 will also bring back a capsule with samples," JAXA said in a statement announcing the name of the asteroid. contain water – making it a proper namesake of an underwater palace.
Hayabusa 2 will stay in Ryugu until the end of 2019, when he will leave with his collected samples and head for the Earth. JAXA hopes to receive the samples the following year.
In labs on Earth, scientists will evaluate asteroid fragments to understand the processes that allowed the planets to form from the vortex of gas and dust surrounding the primitive sun. They will compare rocks to meteorites and samples collected by other missions, including OSIRIS-Rex from NASA, expected to arrive at the asteroid Bennu in 2020.
"By studying asteroids, we are learning more about the early solar system and more about life itself," said the "Science Specialist" and CEO of the Planetary Society. Bill Nye tweeted that the rovers made their descent Friday. "It's amazing to be a human being right now in the history of space exploration."
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