[ad_1]
After spending six years in space, including three years traveling alongside the asteroid Ryugu, Japan’s Hayabusa-2 is scheduled to return to Earth on Sunday, December 6. Hayabusa-2 left Ryugu about a year ago and has almost completed its 300 million kilometers. (180 million miles) of travel through space. By returning the samples to Earth, it will be the first time scientists have managed to collect a piece of an asteroid from space and return it to our planet.
The spacecraft is scheduled to land somewhere in Australia, with detectors and monitors installed across the country so researchers at the Japanese space agency JAXA can easily find where the 16-inch spacecraft will land.
Hayabusa-2 and its lander became the first of them to make contact with an asteroid in September 2018.
Asteroids like Ryugu are a time capsule form of the formation of the solar system.
Because of this, scientists hope that the asteroid samples will offer delicious information about the history of our solar system.
Some of the rocks at Ryugu are made up of carbonaceous chondrite, which is believed to be one of the oldest materials in the solar system, dating back 4.5 billion years, and something that is rarely found on Earth.
The discovery will give scientists a better understanding of how our galactic neighborhood and, ultimately, our planet came to be.
In particular, the scientists hope to study organic molecules in Ryugu. By doing so, the team can better understand the origin of life on Earth.
Mission manager Makoto Yoshikawa said: “We may be able to obtain substances that give us clues about the birth of a planet and the origin of life … I am very interested in seeing the substance.”
READ MORE: NASA reveals that the ‘asteroid’ 2020 SO was actually part of the rocket from the 1960s
It will then continue onto asteroid 1998 KY26, a ball-shaped asteroid with a diameter of only 30 meters.
The spacecraft will arrive there in 2031 when it will be more than 300 million kilometers from Earth.
Again, the spacecraft will simply observe and photograph the asteroid and will not collect samples.
Seiichiro Watanabe, Hayabusa-2 probe project scientist and professor of planetary science at Nagoya University, said: “It’s like an athlete who scored two attempts in a Rugby World Cup match trying to compete in the Olympics. , 10 years after changing to figure skating.
“We never expected Hayabusa-2 to carry out another mission … but it is a scientifically significant and fascinating plan.”
[ad_2]
