Two Japanese space robots land on an asteroid 200 million kilometers

JAXA, the Japanese space agency, has successfully landed two mobile exploration robots on an asteroid crossing the space to more than 200 million kilometers of land. The rovers, collectively known as MINERVA-II, were launched from the Hayabusa spacecraft on Friday.

This is the first time that Hayabusa2, an unmanned exploration mission launched in December 2014, has successfully landed mobile robots on an asteroid. Hayabusa2 arrived at the asteroid near Ryugu Land at the end of June. and half-investigation.

A previous Hayabusa mission was judged only partially successful due to technical issues that hindered collection efforts. Some asteroids were collected by the mission, however,

The MINERVA-II minibots were separated first from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft on Friday. There were tense moments when the communication link with the robots was lost shortly after the separation.

"Communication with MINERVA-II1 is currently halted, this is probably due to Ryugu's rotation, and MINERVA-II1 is now on the other side of the asteroid, and we are currently working to confirm if any images capture the landing of MINERVA-II1, "said Hayabusa2's team via Twitter.

The link has finally been restored and the robots seem to be working normally.

"Both rovers are in good condition and transmit images and data," according to a JAXA release.

Takashi Kubota, a spokesman for the Hayabusa 2 mission, expressed the joy of the team. "The good news made me very happy.The image taken by MINERVA-II during a leap allowed me to relax while the dream of several years became a reality." I felt impressed by what we had accomplished in Japan, deep space exploration. "

Robots are increasingly useful in space exploration. NASA has prepared a mission that relies on robots to extract resources from the moon, for example. The space agency currently uses a range of robots to supplement or replace human teams.

Next month, the Hayabusa2 orbiter will deploy a larger mobile, called the MASCOT (Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout). A second jumping robot will be deployed next year.