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It stunned, dazzled, and then was gone in an instant. In the early hours of Sunday morning, Japan’s sample capsule Hayabusa2 Spaceship immersed in the atmosphere over the mining town of Coober Pedy in South Australia, blasting an ephemeral trail of fire across the sky.
Above the Lookout Cave motel in the center of town, just before 4 a.m. local time (9:30 a.m. PT on Saturday), 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, Queensland, 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 was the first sample from the subsurface of an asteroid. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency confirmed that the 16-inch container had landed on the flat, ocher-colored plains of the Woomera Forbidden Area (WPA) more than 200 miles southeast of Coober Pedy at approximately 4:37 a.m. local time. .
The landing was the culmination of a decade of work by JAXA scientists and engineers, and came six years after Hayabusa2, which is about the size of two washing machines together, 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. . On two occasions in 2019, it collected samples from the surface in brief start-up maneuvers.
Masaki Fujimoto, deputy director of JAXA’s Institute for Astronautical and Space Sciences, says the mission has been one of the defining moments of his life. When it came to an end, it was obvious that the surprising ending and recovery operations would be bittersweet.
“This is the last time we will all be together,” Fujimoto said.
But the mission is not over yet. The recovery of the capsule took place in the pre-dawn darkness of the interior, and the confirmation of the capsule collection was confirmed early on December 6. The initial analysis took place in Woomera. The team then shipped the capsule via chartered flight from Australia to Japan, where it will be transported to JAXA for further analysis.
Indoor adventure
The Australian Space Agency and the country’s Department of Defense played an important role in the safe return of the capsule. The Department of Defense manages the Woomera Forbidden Area, a huge 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 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 hovering 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 to fly and collect it at approximately 4:47 a.m. The first person who had the honor of touching the capsule was a security officer, says Satoru Nakazawa, who led the recuperation. 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 estimates 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 took it back to QLF for testing. According to JAXA’s Hayabusa2 Twitter account, all operations ended at 6:01 am “The operation was perfect”, the tweet read.
Hajime Yano, a scientist at the Institute of Astronautical and Space Sciences, says 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 latent alien asteroid disease or 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 by the team, according to Fujimoto, detected gas in the sample but could not confirm whether it originated from Ryugu or whether it was contamination from Earth after landing.
“The sealability of the capsule is excellent,” he said Monday. “As long as the samples are brought to the curing facility within 100 hours, there will be as little contamination as promised at the beginning of the project.”
The sample capsule is loaded onto a plane on its way back to Japan.
JAXA
An aircraft carrying the sample capsule landed at Haneda Airport in Japan at 7:20 am local time on Tuesday. The capsule was removed from the aircraft and transported to the ISAS facility in Sagamihara at 11:27 a.m., within 100 hours. One of the scientists who was there to meet him was Tsuda Yuichi, the mission’s project manager.
“I was very moved,” he said in translated comments at a news conference Tuesday. “I am really happy and pleased. This is the starting point of the new science and I am very happy that Hayabusa can contribute to that.”
Gas analysis will continue, but it may take a little longer before the capsule is officially opened. Fujimoto says it is likely to occur sometime “around December 20.” The capsule will be carefully disassembled and then moved to a clean room where the sample will be processed and opened under vacuum conditions at JAXA’s Sagamihara campus.
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 Earth’s surface and potentially how organic material fell on the early planet and started life here.
Return to Woomera
Many JAXA team members will now turn their attention to Phobos and Deimos, two moons of Mars. The Martian Moons Exploration 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. 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. ASA Director Megan Clark is excited about maintaining the relationship between Japan and Australia, which will allow the country’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.
Update Dec 7: Add Fujimoto comments on gas analysis, information from Tsuda Yuichi press conference.
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