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Call it a special delivery: After six years in space, Japan’s Hayabusa-2 probe is heading home, but only to drop off its rare asteroid samples before starting a new mission.
The fridge-sized probe, launched in December 2014, has already thrilled scientists by landing and collecting material from an asteroid some 300 million kilometers from Earth.
But their work is not done yet, and scientists at the Japanese space agency JAXA now plan to extend their mission for more than a decade and target two new asteroids.
Before the mission can begin, Hayabusa-2 needs to drop off his precious samples of the asteroid Ryugu – “dragon palace” in Japanese.
Scientists expect the capsule to contain about 0.1 grams of material that offers clues about what the solar system was like at its birth about 4.6 billion years ago.
The samples could shed light on “how matter is scattered around the solar system, why it exists on the asteroid and how it is related to Earth,” project director Yuichi Tsuda told reporters ahead of Sunday’s delivery.
The material is in a capsule that will separate from Hayabusa-2 while it is about 220,000 kilometers above Earth and then plummet into the southern Australian desert.
They were collected during two crucial phases of the mission last year.
In the first, Hayabusa-2 landed on Ryugu to collect dust before firing an “impactor” to remove pristine material from below the surface. Months later, it made landfall to collect additional samples.
“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.
Protected from sunlight and radiation inside the capsule, the samples will be collected, processed, and then shipped to Japan.
Half of the material will be shared between JAXA, the US space agency NASA and other international organizations, and the rest will be kept for future study as advances in analytical technology are made.
Also read: Japan’s space probe on its way back after an asteroid mission
Two new asteroid targets
After leaving its samples, Hayabusa-2 will complete a series of orbits around the sun for about six years, recording data on dust in interplanetary space and observing exoplanets.
It will then zoom in on the first of its target asteroids in July 2026.
The probe won’t get as close to the asteroid named 2001 CC21, but scientists hope it can photograph it as it completes a “high-speed spin.”
Getting this close could also help develop knowledge about how to protect Earth from an asteroid impact.
Next, Hayabusa-2 will head towards its main target, 1998 KY26, a ball-shaped asteroid with a diameter of only 30 meters. When the probe reaches the asteroid in July 2031, it will be approximately 300 million kilometers from Earth.
And the lens poses major new challenges, not least because it rotates rapidly, rotating on its axis approximately every 10 minutes.
Hayabusa-2 will observe and photograph the asteroid, but it is unlikely that it will land and collect samples, as it will probably not have enough fuel to return them to Earth.
Still, reaching the asteroid will be a feat, said Seiichiro Watanabe, a project scientist for the Hayabusa-2 probe and a professor of planetary science at Nagoya University.
“It’s like an athlete who scored two tries in a Rugby World Cup match trying to compete in the Olympics, 10 years after switching to figure skating,” he told reporters.
“We never expected Hayabusa-2 to carry out another mission … but it is a scientifically significant and fascinating plan.”
The mission extension carries risks, including that the Hayabusa-2 team will degrade in deep space, but it also offers a rare and comparatively cost-effective way to continue research.
The probe is the successor to JAXA’s first asteroid explorer “Hayabusa”, which means hawk in Japanese.
That probe brought back dust samples from a smaller potato-shaped asteroid in 2010 after a seven-year odyssey, and it was hailed as a scientific triumph.
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