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After a journey of three and a half billion kilometers, a Japanese spacecraft launched a pair of grapefruit-sized rovers last week on an asteroid named Ryugu and began bringing images back to the surface of the small world.
The feat scored a trio of firsts: first soft landing on an asteroid, first deployment of rovers in a low gravity context, and first close-up look at the type of celestial object that would have allowed to sow life on Earth billions of years ago.
The images from the Hayabusa 2 probe also gave rise to another, more personal first: a glimpse of an extraterrestrial landscape, unlike humans.
"I can not find words to express how happy I am," said Yuichi Tsuda, project manager at Hayabusa 2, in a statement written just after the landing.
Hayabusa 2's is slowly being built up to this point since its launch in December 2014. Driven by the gentle thrust of its engines, the spacecraft finally caught up with Ryugu in June and began to win at its target before deploying the rovers.
The wide asteroid of one kilometer has confused the expectations from the beginning.
On the one hand, Ryugu has a strangely geometric shape, broad in the middle and almost pointed at the poles, and a surprisingly rugged surface. "We did not expect the asteroid" first form "before our arrival," Tsuda said in an email to NBC News MACH. His colleague, Sei-ichiro Watanabe, project scientist Hayabusa 2, added, "I was surprised by the many Ryugu rocks scattered all over the surface.
Now that the tiny rovers, called MINERVA II-1a and MINERVA II-1b, can take a closer look, the strange asteroid seems even stranger. "It sounds like volcanic lava on Earth, like the island of Izu-Ohshima in Japan or the big island of Hawaii," said Watanabe.
The Hayabusa 2 scientists are excited about the rugged terrain as they offer insight into the asteroid's violent past. Understanding these small bodies also provides a crucial context for NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe, currently en route to a similar but slightly smaller asteroid called Bennu.
Lessons of life from a broken rock
The Hayabusa 2 team expects Ryugu's study to enable them to fill some gaps in our understanding of the formation and evolution of asteroids and planets.
Astronomers can observe young stars surrounded by dusty disks where planets seem to be forming. They can also see the end result in our solar system: a few mature planets with millions of large and small asteroids.
What they can not see is what happened in the meantime, when innumerable collisions between these celestial bodies created, shattered and recreated the building blocks of the planets. In one way or another, this process has left the Earth with water and the organic compounds that have allowed life to emerge.
Ryugu is a beaten survivor of that time. More importantly, it's the most telling type of survivor: an asteroid rich in aqueous and carbonaceous compounds. "We are looking for clues about the origin of the solar system and the origin of life," Tsuda said. "Asteroids like Ryugu are the best place to address these two fundamental questions of humanity."
More rovers, flying hammers and dust collectors
In addition to rovers already deployed, Hayabusa2 still has two rovers in reserve. A larger and more complex rover called MASCOT, built by the DLR (German Aerospace Center), could land on Ryugu as early as next week. Another rover, called confusing MINERVA II-2, will follow in the spring or next summer.
And placing rovers on Ryugu is not even the most daring part of the mission. "It will be very difficult to sample for such an asteroid. An impactor experiment to create an artificial crater on Ryugu is also a risky attempt, "said Watanabe, noting that two of Hayabysa's key activities are yet to come.
For the impactor experiment, explosive charges will propel a four-pound slug to Ryugu at more than 4,000 miles per hour. When it strikes, the slug will explode a portion of the asteroid's topsoil, exposing the fresh material to be studied. As the main spacecraft will have to move away from the asteroid to protect itself from the explosion, it will deploy a floating camera called DCAM3 to capture the images from the moment of the attack. This should be quite a show.
"Touch and go" refers to the culmination of the Hayabusa 2 mission, when the main gear will lower to the surface of Ryugu, pick up pieces of the surface, load them in a cartridge and then return them to Earth.
If things go as planned, the cartridge will be parachuted over Australia in December 2020. This will be another first: the first time, a new sample of carbon-rich asteroid will return to Earth for a study Detailed.
When the OSIRIS-REx probe lands on Bennu, it will also collect a sample and send it back to Earth. The idea is that scientists will be able to study both asteroids not only from remote measurements, but by examining them atom by atom.
"OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa 2 are complementary missions," said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission. "We are working together to understand the history of the solar system. Comparing and contrasting Ryugu and Bennu, we gain a deeper understanding of the diversity of compositions, geology and orbital evolution of asteroids. "
They may be small worlds and small spacecraft, but the lessons they teach us could be enormous.
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