In Wummera, a dusty desert town in South Australia, scientists are getting ready. On December 6, 2020, after six years in space, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Haibusa 2 spacecraft will finally return to Earth.
It carries with it a surprisingly rare, precious and hard-won cargo – the planet collects at least 100 milligrams of material from the surface of the planet Rayuguni. It will leave a sampled capsule on Earth, the spacecraft itself continues to visit more planetary targets.
The return of Haibusa 2 will mark a milestone in the remarkable feat of space science, with a total journey of about 5.24 billion kilometers (about 3.3 billion miles). The asteroid Rayugu – formerly known as 1999 JU3 – is in an elliptical orbit that carries it inside the Earth’s orbit around the Sun and as far away as the orbit of Mars.
The plan for Hayabusa 2’s voyage was to calculate where the asteroid would be in the future, and to plot the route required to get the spacecraft using the Earth’s gravity for an accelerated explosion.
After that, the spacecraft had to try to touch the asteroid twice, both times collecting material and bouncing the ester off Ed again before returning to Earth as soon as the journey to Earth was completed.
The spacecraft is now on the stretch of the house, and the capsule collection team has reached all over Australia. Capsule retrieval rehearsals and tests of the technology used to track the incoming capsule are being conducted.
Preliminary team members who have already cleared their two-week COVID-19 quarantine arrived at Woomera Royal Australian Australian Air Force Base last week, and began preparations for landing and retrieval.
That small cargo is a big deal. Only one other mission has successfully returned a sample of the planet. A sample returned to Earth in 2010 from JXA’s original Hybusa mission for Actor X Id It Ok Kava – but the sampling device failed, and only a few micrograms of material was harvested at home.
One hundred milligrams is the complete wealth of the material, and scientists hope to be able to perform detailed tests. Because Ryug is an ancient carbonaceous asteroid, it is thought to have been about a billion. Since its formation billions of years ago, it has preserved some of the oldest material in the solar system relatively intact (except for some irradiations).
That small specimen, scientists hope, could provide some insight into the early days of the solar system and the formation and evolution of the inner rocky planets.
The capsule is expected to land between ACDT (Australian Australian Central Daylight Time) on December 6, 2020 between 30.30 am and 4.30 am, creating a bright fireball produced by the heat of atmospheric input. The special heat shield will protect the capsule from a temperature of about 3,000 degrees Celsius (5,400 degrees Fahrenheit).
After deploying its parachute, it will descend into an area of 100 square kilometers (40 square miles-) in the Woomera Protected Area and send a radio signal to the retrieval team. Once the beacon lands, the signal cannot be detected by ground stations, so the capsule will be flown over by a helicopter to track down.
Once it is located, the capsule will be flown by helicopter to the Quick Look facility. There, any gases inside the container will be sampled, before the container will be placed in a sealed transport box and transported to Japan. At the same time when the next phase of the research process will really begin, as scientists begin the enterprise task of studying and analyzing the rock.
However, most people in the world will not be able to see the pantry live again, JXA has issued AR application, inspection and photography tips for iOS to track the route of the capsule, and, for everyone. JXA is also considering a live stream of capsule release and atmospheric penetration.
Meanwhile, the flight to Haibusa 2 will continue. Its next stop will be the asteroid (98943) 2001 CC21 in July 2026, then it will continue on the asteroid 1998 KY26 for the July 2031 rendezvous.
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