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It stunned, dazzled, and then was gone in an instant. In the early hours of Sunday morning local time, the Japan sample capsule Hayabusa2 Spaceship it soared through the atmosphere over the Australian mining town of Coober Pedy, blasting a fleeting trail of fire across the sky.
Above the Lookout Cave Motel in downtown, just before 4 a.m. local time (9:30 p.m. Pacific time), a dozen people gathered and mingled. Tripods were mounted and camera equipment tuned and aimed at the sky. Then, without a sound, a flickering point of light appeared in the darkness. He moved quickly. The crowd erupted into “ooh” and some pointed their phones at the sky.
Among those enthralled by the show were Ross, 34, of Townsville, and his two sons, 6-year-old Max and 8-year-old Chase. “It was really good,” Ross said. “It was worth getting up early.”
Enclosed within the capsule is the first sample from the subsurface of an asteroid. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) confirmed that the 16-inch container had landed on the flat and ocher plains of the Woomera Prohibited Area more than 200 miles southeast of Coober Pedy at approximately 4:37 a.m. local time ( 10:07 am PT, Saturday).
The landing is the culmination of a decade of work by JAXA scientists and engineers, and comes six years after Hayabusa2, which is about the size of a washing machine, left Earth. The spacecraft traveled more than 3.2 billion miles on its journey to the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu and back, and spent more than a year using specialized cameras, radar, and an infrared imager to inspect the spinning top-shaped rock. . Twice in 2019, it collected samples from the surface in brief start-up and running maneuvers.
Masaki Fujimoto, deputy director of JAXA’s Institute of Astronautical and Space Sciences (ISAS), says the mission has been one of the defining moments of his life. When it came to an end, it was obvious that the impressive ending and recovery operations they would be bittersweet. .
“This is the last time we will all be together,” Fujimoto said.
There is still work to be done, starting with ensuring that the contents of the capsule are safe. The recovery mission took place in the pre-dawn darkness of the interior and confirmation of the capsule collection is still pending.
Indoor adventure
The Australian Space Agency and the Department of Defense (DOD) played an important role in the safe return of the capsule. The Department of Defense manages the Woomera Forbidden Area (WPA), a large swath of land, about half the size of the UK, where the capsule was guided after its release from Hayabusa2 on Saturday. Road closures prevented residents from passing through the region for nearly 12 hours, as a precaution.
JAXA engineers adjusted the final landing zone to an area roughly one-tenth that size, with some deft maneuvering as the spacecraft traveled back to Earth.
The sample entered Earth’s atmosphere moving at about 7.5 miles per second, but when it hit the dense atmosphere, it slowed to around 110 yards per second, throwing off its heat shield and deploying its parachute. After gliding for about 20 minutes, it landed on the WPA’s red, Mars-like plains.
To help locate the sample capsule, members of the Defense Forces noticed it as it began to burn in the atmosphere, tracking it with ground cameras and radar. This allowed the JAXA team to locate the sample and send their helicopter team flying and picking it up at approximately 4:47 am local. The first person who had the honor of touching the capsule was a security officer, says Satoru Nakazawa, who led the recovery mission.
Once the capsule was acquired, the recovery team quickly moved it to a pop-up laboratory within the Woomera Range Operations Center, known as the Quick Look Facility, or QLF.
What is in the box?
The team predicts that Hayabusa2 collected about one gram of material from Ryugu, based on observations from the spacecraft’s cameras. Confirmation of exactly what was captured during the two Hayabusa2 heists is expected in the coming weeks.
JAXA’s specialist recovery team located the capsule at approximately 5:34 am local time and brought it back to QLF for testing. According to JAXA’s Hayabusa2 Twitter account, all operations ended at 6:01 am local (11:31 am PT). “The operation was perfect”, the tweet read.
Hajime Yano, an ISAS scientist, says that the sample capsule will not be opened until it is returned to the ISAS facility in Japan. However, a device that can measure small amounts of gas in a sample was installed inside the QLF to perform the first analysis of the capsule.
The facility includes a clean room, and staff should be dressed from head to toe in protective gear, not out of concern for some long-dormant alien asteroid disease or even COVID-19but to protect the sample from any contamination. After the return, Yano and his team pierced the bottom of the capsule to detect any residual gas. A preliminary analysis will allow researchers to determine whether Hayabusa2 managed to snatch chunks of rock and debris from the surface of Ryugu.
Fujimoto says the capsule will open in Japan sometime “around December 20.” The contents of the capsule are expected to improve our understanding of the early solar system and Earth.
Ryugu’s previous observations by Hayabusa2 have suggested that there are traces of water-containing minerals within the asteroid. Some scientists believe that this may have been how water reached the Earth’s surface and potentially how organic material fell on the early planet and started life.
Return to Woomera
Many JAXA team members will now turn their attention to Phobos and Deimos, two moons of Mars. The Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) mission is scheduled to launch in 2024 and will likely return a sample obtained from the surface of Phobos by 2029.
The mission will have partnerships with NASA, the French Space Agency and the European Space Agency (ESA). It is also likely to have another key partner: Australia. Although not officially confirmed, Fujimoto has hinted that those samples would also land indoors.
“With my experience this time, I’m really inclined to have Woomera as a landing site,” he said. “We want to continue collaborating.”
Fujimoto says that the interests of JAXA and the interests of the Australian Space Agency are closely aligned. Megan Clark, director of the Australian Space Agency, is excited to keep the Japan-Australia relationship going, allowing the nation’s fledgling agency to continue to grow.
“International partnerships are essential for us,” he said. “We cannot transform our own space industry and grow the jobs here without the depth of international partnerships.”
Hayabusa2’s sample return mission has ended, but the spacecraft has not been retired. JAXA engineers and scientists will lead the probe to two other asteroids over the next decade. And there may also be another Hayabusa mission in the works. The JAXA staff have dropped tantalizing hints that the duology could become a trilogy in the future. Will we see a Hayabusa3? That is a clear possibility.
A press conference detailing the sample retrieval operation is scheduled for 11pm PST on Saturday, with Megan Clark, Fujimoto, and other representatives from JAXA. You can find the sequence below.
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