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A capsule containing pristine asteroid samples will open a path to Earth on Saturday morning US time.
JAXA
The Japanese Space Agency JAXA is getting ready to return samples collected from asteroid ryugu by the intrepid and expertly designed Hayabusa2 probe. The spacecraft’s sample collection capsule will land near Woomera in the Australian outback early Sunday morning local time (Saturday in the US and Europe). If you want to know how to watch the sample return mission live, we’ve got you covered here.
What’s all the fuss about? Well, Hayabusa2 launched in 2014 and reunited with asteroid Ryugu in June 2018. After shoot the asteroid with a bullet in 2019, the spacecraft was able to take samples of material from the subsurface of the space rock, possibly the first time a spacecraft has done so, and store them in the capsule that will return to Earth over the weekend.
Until JAXA scientists and engineers return to Japan, we won’t know for sure what has been captured, but it seems incredibly likely that we will be able to snoop inside an asteroid for the first time. Material trapped inside could tell us about the early solar system and explain how water was transported to the planet in its formative years.
JAXA will provide a live broadcast of the event from Mission Control. Transmission will begin at 9 a.m. PT on Saturday, December 5. The broadcast is expected to last about 70 minutes, but can be extended to 90. That’s a few seconds after the fireball is expected to appear and it is currently unknown if there will be ground-level vision when the spacecraft returns to Earth .
“Given the nature of our operations with the minimum number of team members at Woomera, we cannot promise anything, but if there is, it will be included in the live broadcast from Sagamihara, Japan,” said Masaki Fujimoto, deputy director of the Space Institute. . and Astronautical Sciences at JAXA.
That live stream is available to watch below. There are currently more than 80 JAXA scientists and engineers stationed in Woomera and the nearby inland town Coober Pedy, ready to spring into action as Hayabusa2 locates its asteroid sample on Earth.
