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After six years of traveling and exploring, tto Hayabusa2 from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Investigation on Saturday he sent a capsule back to Earth filled with what scientists hope is at least a 100 milligram sample of the asteroid Ryugu, which is on 186 million miles (300 million kilometers) from the earth. Hayabusa2 has made history by bringing the world back first subsoil asteroid sign.
The capsule separated from the main Hayabusa2 spacecraft in 12:30 am ET Saturday, according to JAXA, and was seen re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere around 12:29 pm ET. Upon re-entering, the capsule briefly turned into a fireball, lleaving a trail in his wake that also guided the JAXA recovery team. In addition to the trail, the capsule itself It contained a radio beacon, which emitted a signal that was detected by the mission managers, to help the team track your location, for him New York Times.
Before landing, the capsule deployed a parachute., which aimed to slow down the vehicle and allow it to land softly in the Woomera Forbidden Area In snorthern Australia. Landing was only part of the task at hand, however, the other part was finding the little capsule, which was about 15 inches (roughly 40 centimeters) in diameter.
If you’re thinking, “well hey, that’s not too small “, please wait: It landed in an area that spans 38 square miles (approximately 100 square kilometers). At night. secondBut the good news is that it landed in the intended landing zone, what was it joked with five antennas to help scientists find the capsule’s beacon signal, the Verge reported. The space agency also had a helicopter on hand with a beacon receiver. to search and a drone that was taking photos.
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Do not worry. They found him.
Yuichi Tsuda, a Hayabusa2 project manager at JAXA, said the agency found the capsule as planned and that it was in perfect condition, according to the Associated Press.
“We were able to land the treasure box,” Tsuda said. “I really want to open it and look inside.”
In fact, for scientists, Ryugu’s asteroid sample is really like a treasure box.. As Verge explains, asteroids are the first images of our Solar System. They have been around for billions of years and scientists don’t think they have changed much. Some scientists believe it is possible that asteroids like Ryugu brought water to earth when they hit it, making the planet habitable. Asteroid samples could help shed light on this hypothesis.
After arriving at Ryugu in June 2018, Hayabusa2 aworked really hard and in very creative ways to get your samples. First, he fired a projectile into Ryugu’s surface to move around the surface material and then successfully collected the debris in his sample collection instrument, wwhich is shaped like a horn. For your second harvest effort, pointed to gather material from Ryugu’s underground firing a copper bullet above the surface, producing an artificial crater surrounded by underground asteroid material. Scientists were especially excited about this attempt, since subsurface material is protected from the effects of space weathering, such as the effects of cosmic rays or charged particles from the Sun.
JAXA scientists are not quite sure how large the sample collected by Hayabusa2 is, but they expect it to be at least 100 milligrams, which they say would be enough to carry out the planned research. The first Hayabusa mission in 2010 failed to get a substantial sample from the asteroid Itokawa due to a failure in the spacecraft’s sampling device. As a result, the scientists were only able to recover micrograms of Itokawa powder.
When it comes to Hayabusa2, scientists won’t know until they open the capsule. The capsule will be opened in Japan and an announcement will be made on the amount of material collected. after, JAXA officials said, according to CNN.
HayabusaHowever, 2 is not yet retired. After leaving the capsule, he zoomed away to go explore another asteroid, 1998KY26 to tackle more research questions, including how to find ways to avoid meteorites hitting the Earth.
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