Hayabusa2 throws an asteroid sample at Earth, maneuvers towards a new target

The Hayabusa2 sample capsule returns home with the first chunks of rock from beneath the surface of an asteroid. At around 9:30 p.m. Pacific time, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced that the capsule had separated from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft and was on its way to land in the Australian outback in just over 12 hours. . It contains samples taken from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, a spinning top-shaped rock that orbits the sun between Earth and Mars.

The separation occurred around 140,000 miles above Earth with the spacecraft traveling at around 7.2 miles per second. JAXA scientists will now prepare for the capsule reentry and recovery process in a region north of Woomera, a city in the Australian outback.

The control room in Sagamihara, Japan blew up in applause and celebration at 9:35 pm PST, approximately five minutes after separation.

“This is such a great and exciting time in the history of space,” Niklas Reinke, director of the Tokyo Office of the German Space Agency, told a news conference after the split. The German Space Agency, DLR, was a critical part of the mission. He helped build the MASCOT lander, which imaged Ryugu’s surface in October 2018.

The sample capsule will enter the atmosphere at exactly 9:28:27 am PT, according to JAXA. When the capsule is submerged deeper, the friction will create a glowing fireball that will blaze up in the sky in parts of South Australia. Landing will occur approximately 20 to 30 minutes later.

JAXA is providing a live stream of the event, which will take place early Saturday morning in the US (and very early Sunday morning Australian time), although they cannot promise that any vision of the fireball will be broadcast during the broadcast. You can find out how to see that here.

I am currently stationed in the mining town of Coober Pedy, some 500 miles from the nearest Australian capital. It is one of the best places to see the fireball, but the weather has not cooperated so far, but it is expected to improve. Keep checking CNET for a glimpse of the capsule’s return over the weekend.

After traveling 3.2 billion miles (5.2 billion kilometers) to Ryugu and vice versa, Hayabusa2’s main mission is over. When the first Hayabusa mission returned samples from the asteroid Itokawa in 2010, it burned up in the atmosphere in spectacular fashion. The same fate does not await the sequel. The probe performed a slight trajectory correction maneuver after releasing the sample capsule. Over the next four hours, your position and attitude will change so that you can slide through Earth’s gravitational field. During its extended mission, it will fly over asteroid 2001 CC21 in 2026 and then encounter another small body, 1998 KY26, in 2031.

Sample recovery missions provide invaluable tools for scientific discovery. They can reveal secrets of otherworldly bodies in our cosmos, such as the moon, and teach us about the formation and evolution of our solar system. JAXA has led the way with asteroid sampling, making its first big breakthrough in 2010 when it returned samples from the Itokawa asteroid, but the mission was fraught with problems and only captured a small amount of material.

But the history of sample recovery missions goes back much further. In the 1970s, Russia and the United States brought samples of the moon’s surface during the Apollo and Luna missions, but few missions have flown since.

Now, the missions are undergoing a mini Renaissance. In October, NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft landed on the asteroid Bennu on a mission that was almost too successful. The spacecraft was able to collect so much rocks and debris that it struggled to close its sample capsule. It will return to Earth in 2023.

And the moon is also not missing any of the deceptive snatch and grab. This week, China announced that its Chang’e 5 mission had landed on the moon and collected samples from the surface. The samples are expected to return to China in mid-December.