Japan’s space agency is nearing the end of its search journey, which aims to shed light on the early ages of the solar system and possibly provide clues about the origin of life on Earth.
But first, it has to go hunting for cleaners in the Australian Australian Outback.
This weekend, a planet will land in a barren region near Woomera, South Australia. It is being carried to Earth by Haibusa 2, a robotic space probe launched by Japan’s space agency JAXA, to explore a planet called Rayugu, a rock rich in carbon, just over half a mile wide.
The success of this mission and the science productions it has achieved, along with NASA, the European Space Agency and Russia, will enhance Japan’s position as a central player in deep space exploration. JAXA currently has a spacecraft in orbit around Venus that studies the planet’s hellish atmosphere and is collaborating on a mission with Europeans on its way to Mercury.
In the coming years, Japan Phobos plans to contribute to NASA’s Artemis program to bring back rocks from Mars and send astronauts to Earth’s moon.
But the immediate challenge will be to find in the dark a 16-inch-wide capsule with asteroid specimens somewhere between hundreds of square miles in an area 280 miles north of the nearby large city of Adelaide.
“It’s not really anywhere in the middle,” said Shogo Tachibna, the chief investigator in charge of analyzing the Hayabusa 2 samples. He is part of a team of more than 70 people from Japan who have reached Womera for the recovery of the capsule. The area, used for testing by the military Australian military, provides a large open space that is ideal for the return of inter-plan investigations.
The small return capsule detached from the main spacecraft 12 hours before the scheduled landing, when it was about 125,000 miles from Earth. JXA will broadcast live coverage of the capsule landing at 11:30 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday. (Sunday will be early morning hours in Australia.)
The capsule is expected to hit the ground a few minutes before noon.
In an interview, mission manager Makoto Yoshikawa said the capsule will re-enter the atmosphere where there is an uncertainty of about 10 kilometers or about six miles in direction. At an altitude of six miles, the capsule will parachute out, and the uncertainty will increase from where it descends.
“The landing place depends on the wind that day,” said Dr. Yoshikawa said. He said the area the explorers have to cover could cover an area of about 60 miles.
A fire trial of the extremely hot air created by the re-entering capsule will help guide the recovery team, such as the radio beacon of the capsule. The task will become more difficult if the beacon fails or the parachute fails to deploy.
There is also a slight rush. The team hopes to recover the capsule, perform an initial analysis and return it to Japan within 100 hours. Even though the capsule is sealed, the concern is that the Earth’s air will slowly get inside. “There’s no perfect ceiling.” Dr. Tachibana said.
Once the capsule is found, a helicopter will take it to a laboratory set up at the Australian Australian Air Force base at Woomera. There are no gases inside an instrument capsule that could have been blown out of the planet by rocks as they were shaken and broken during re-entry. Dr. Yoshikawa said scientists would also like to see if they could detect any solar wind particles of helium that have crept into the planet and become embedded in rocks.
Gas also assures scientists that Haibusa 2 from Rayugu has actually successfully collected samples. A minimum of 0.1 g, or less than 1/280 m / s, is required to declare success. The hope is that the spacecraft brought back a few grams.
In Japan, the Haibusa 2 team will begin analyzing Ryugu samples. In about a year, some samples will be shared with other scientists for additional study.
To collect these samples, Haibusa landed on the asteroid on June 2, 2018. He conducted a series of investigations into each, increasing the technical complexity. It exploded a hole in the planet for the eclipse to drop small pieces of the planet’s bottom, leaving probes on Ryugu’s surface, and the operation proved to be more challenging than expected due to many boulders. Surface.
Masaki Fujimoto, deputy director general of space and astronaut science, an organization part of the JUSA, said planetary scientists like Rayugu were not interested in planetary scientists focusing on planetary studies. “Small body, who cares?” He said. “But if you’re serious about building a planetary system, small organizations really do matter.”
Studying water trapped in minerals from Ryugu brings water asteroids into the Earth’s oceans, and could give clues as to if carbon-based atoms could have been able to seduce building blocks for life.
A portion of the Rayugu samples will go to NASA, which will bring back some rocks and soil from another planet from its OSIRIS-Rex mission. OSIRIIRIS-RXX is studying a small carbon-rich asteroid called Space Probe Bennu and will return to Earth next spring, leaving its rocky specimens in September 2023.
Ryugu and Bennu became surprisingly similar in some ways, both looking like spinning tops and surfaces covered with boulders, but different in other ways. The rocks on Ryugu have very little water for one. The importance of similarities and differences will not be clear until scientists study rocks in more detail.
Harold C., professor of geology at Rowan University in New Jersey and a mission model scientist for OSIRIS-Rex. “When the OSIRIS-Rex sample comes back, we will have lessons from the Hayabusa 2 mission,” Connolly Jr. said. “The similarities and differences are absolutely fascinating.”
Dr. Conn. Connolly hopes to go to Japan next summer to take part in the analysis of Ryugu samples.
Haibusa 2 is not Japan’s first planetary mission. Indeed, its name refers to the existence of Hayabusa, an earlier mission that took back samples from another planet, Itokawa. But that mission, which began in 2003 and returned in 2010, faced major technical difficulties. JXA’s Akatsuki spacecraft, currently in orbit around Venus, was restored by a Japanese agency to a scientific mission after years of difficulty. The Japanese mission to Mars in 2003 also failed.
In contrast, the performance of the Hybusa 2 is almost flawless, although it retains the same general structure as its predecessor. “Really, there are no big issues,” said Mission Manager Dr. Yoshikawa said. “Small people, of course.”
He said the team studied the failures at Haibusa in detail and made changes as needed, and also conducted numerous rehearsals to anticipate any contingencies that might arise.
Japanese missions typically operate on smaller budgets than NASA and thus often carry fewer equipment. The Hybusa 2 is priced at less than 300 300 million while the OSIRIIRIS-Rex will cost about 1 1 billion.
Leaving the Rayugu samples is not the end of the Haibusa 2 mission. After releasing the return capsule, the main spacecraft shifted course to avoid colliding with Earth, missing by 125 miles. It will now travel to another asteroid, a small 1998 KY26 designated with a diameter of only 100 feet but spinning fast, completing one orbit in less than 11 minutes.
Haibusa 2 will use Earth’s two flybies to fly to KY26 itself, finally arriving in 2031.
