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A Japanese spaceship returns to Earth on Saturday with a very special delivery: a capsule containing the first rock samples from beneath the surface of an asteroid. When plummeting to Earth, the capsule will provide a stunning spectacle over the Australian outback, streaking across the sky like a dazzling fireball.
The project director, Yuichi Tsuda, called the mission a “rare event in human history.” It is only the second time that pristine and intact material directly from an asteroid has been returned to Earth.
JAXA, Japan’s national aerospace and space agency, is broadcasting the event live at 11:30 am ET on Twitter and YouTube. Look it here:
Japan Hayabusa2 Probe, which is about the size of a refrigerator, launched in December 2014, thrilled scientists when it landed on the diamond-shaped asteroid Ryugu, which means “dragon palace” in Japanese, located 185 million miles away.
After six years in space, he now briefly returns to Earth before embarking on his next mission.
ISAS / JAXA via AP, file
Scientists hope the probe will bring home a small amount of asteroid material, picked up last year, with the aim of learning more about the origins of the solar system and life on Earth. Scientists believe that the rocks that make up the asteroid are around four billion years old.
The samples could shed light on “how matter is scattered around the solar system, why it exists on the asteroid and how it relates to Earth,” Tsuda told reporters, according to a press release on Friday.
The samples were collected during two separate landings at Ryugu last year. During the first, the probe collected dust and blew a hole in the asteroid’s surface to find additional material beneath it. Several months later, the probe returned to the crater it created to collect more samples.
JAXA via AP
“It is possible that we can obtain substances that give us clues about the birth of a planet and the origin of life … I am very interested in seeing the substances,” mission director Makoto Yoshikawa told reporters.
The material is held in a 15-inch-wide capsule that was successfully separated from the probe about 136,701 miles above Earth in Saturday morning before its planned descent into the Australian Outback, near Woomera, South Australia. A parachute will open about six miles above the ground and the signals will alert space agency officials to its location.
But the rescue mission could prove challenging.
According to The Associated Press, JAXA officials installed satellite dishes, marine radars, drones and helicopters to aid in the treasure hunt.
A fireball will streak through the sky during reentry, visible in the early hours of Sunday morning in Australia, hopefully pointing scientists in the direction of the capsule.
JAXA via AP
After officials find and collect the capsule, the samples will be processed and flown to Japan, then divided between researchers from JAXA, NASA and other international organizations.
Some samples will be reserved for future study when technology has advanced further.
JAXA plans to extend the Hayabusa2 mission for more than a decade, with its sights set on two new asteroids, 2001 CC21 and 1998 KY26.
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission recently collected a sample from another near-Earth asteroid, Bennu, which is similar to Ryugu. The sample will return to Earth in 2023.
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