Watch live from Mission Control while Hayabusa2 creates a crater on an asteroid

Most of the rocky bodies in the solar system carry the marks of past impacts, but scientists can only rarely observe these impacts occurring in real time – and they are about to have such a chance.

The Japanese mission Hayabusa2 Ryugu arrived at the destination, ready to make this possible, thanks to a maneuver called the small cabin impactor operation. This operation is scheduled to take place tonight (April 4 in the United States, the morning of April 5 at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, headquarters).

You can watch a live broadcast from the dubbed mission control in English on Space.com, courtesy of JAXA, or directly through the the YouTube channel of the agencyfrom 8:30 pm EDT (April 5, 0030 GMT).

Related: The Ryugu asteroid is surprisingly dry, discovers a Japanese spacecraft

This operation is designed to help scientists better understand the interior of the asteroid. For about 40 minutes, the small hand impactor will separate from the Hayabusa2 satellite, which will then hide on the other side of the asteroid to protect itself flying debris. Along the way, Hayabusa2 will release a camera that will observe the impact about 1 km away and return a few hours of photographs.

Then, it is the hour of the show. The impactor approaches the surface of the asteroid, then deploys explosives on board. The detonation will increase the speed of the impactor up to 2 km per second in a split second, creating a new crater on Ryugu.

The deployed camera will photograph the entire event, recording how debris is flying away from the impact. These data will help scientists understand the structure of Ryugu, including how much empty space is inside the rock.

Once the dust settles, Hayabusa2 will move away from behind Ryugu. And if all goes well, the scientists hope to be able to bring the main spacecraft back to the surface near the new crater to closely observe the new element, or even take a sample of rock nearby.

The small cabin impactor operation is one of Ryugu's last Hayabusa2 tasks: all that remains is to deploy the spacecraft another little rovercalled MINERVA-II 2, which should take place late this summer. Then it's time to return to Earth with samples on board.

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