A Japanese probe sent to collect samples from an asteroid 300 million kilometers away for clues about the origin of life and the solar system landed successfully yesterday, scientists said.
Hayabusa2 touched down briefly on the asteroid Ryugu, fired a bullet into the surface to puff up dust for collection and blasted back to its holding position, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) officials said.
A livestream of the control room showed dozens of JAXA staff members nervously monitoring data ahead of the touchdown before exploding into applause after receiving a signal from Hayabusa2 that it had landed.
Photo: AFP / Jiji Press
“We made a successful touchdown, including firing a bullet” into the asteroid, Hayabusa2 project manager Yuichi Tsuda told reporters. “We made the ideal touchdown in the best conditions.”
The complicated procedure took less time than expected and appeared to go without a hitch, Hayabusa2 mission manager Makoto Yoshikawa said.
“I’m really relieved now. It felt very long until the moment the touchdown happened,” he said.
The firing of the bullet — the first of three planned in this mission — “will lead to a leap, or new discoveries, in planetary science,” he said.
The asteroid is thought to contain relatively large amounts of organic matter and water from about 4.6 billion years ago, when the solar system was born.
During a later mission, Hayabusa2 is to eventually fire an “impactor” to blast out material from underneath Ryugu’s surface, allowing the collection of “fresh” materials unexposed to millennia of solar wind and radiation.
Scientists hope those samples might provide answers to some fundamental questions about life and the universe, including whether elements from space helped give rise to life on Earth.
Communication with the probe is cut off at times, as its antennae are not always pointed toward Earth and it could take several more days to confirm the bullet was actually fired to allow the collection of samples.
The mission has not been completely smooth sailing, as the probe’s landing was originally scheduled for last year.
However, it was pushed back after surveys found that the asteroid’s surface was more rugged than initially thought, forcing JAXA to take more time to find a suitable landing site.
The Hayabusa2 mission, with a price tag of about ￥30 billion (US$270.6 million), was launched in December 2014 and is scheduled to return to Earth with its samples next year.
Photographs of Ryugu — which means “dragon palace” in Japanese and refers to a castle at the bottom of the ocean in an ancient Japanese tale — show an asteroid shaped a bit like a spinning top with a rough surface.
The probe observes the surface of the asteroid with its camera and sensing equipment, but has also deployed two tiny MINERVA-II rover robots, as well as the French-German robot MASCOT, to help surface observation.
Scientists have already received data from the probes deployed on the surface of the asteroid.
Hayabusa2 is equipped with solar panels and is the successor to JAXA’s first asteroid explorer, Hayabusa — Japanese for falcon.
That probe returned from a smaller, potato-shaped asteroid in 2010 with dust samples, despite various setbacks during its epic seven-year odyssey.
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