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The capsule of a Japanese probe that was launched six years ago to collect samples of asteroids in space landed on Earth’s surface on Saturday. The information was advanced during the afternoon (continental Portugal time) by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa), which transmitted the event, live, on YouTube and Twitter.
“We found the capsule with the parachute,” reads a brief release The Jaxa team responsible for the project, posted at 8 pm on Twitter. Hours earlier, the landing had been described as “perfect”.
It was in 2014 when the Hayabusa 2 probe (Japanese word for “hawk”) first set off for the asteroid Ryugu (located 300 million kilometers from Tfailures) collect samples to study the origin and evolution of the solar system as the formation of asteroids goes back to the beginning of solar systems.
Jaxa broadcast the landing of the capsule live on social networks
JAXA
It is estimated that the small capsule, which landed this Saturday in the town of Woomera, in South Australia, contains at least 100 milligrams of the asteroid Ryugu. It is the second time in history that the material inside an asteroid reaches our planet in one piece. The project director, Yuichi Tsuda, describes the project as a “rare event in the history of mankind”.
As it crossed the earth’s surface, the capsule left a trail of fire like a meteorite or a fireball with various images circulating on social media. “The light is due to the heat shield of the capsule, which must have reached temperatures around 3000 degrees Celsius during atmospheric re-entry, protecting the sample from temperature ”, explained, on Twitter, Elizabeth Tasker, a British astrophysicist working at Jaxa. For this reason, Tasker points out, the capsule, although small, weighs “about 16 kilograms.”
The project began in 2014 with the shipment of the Hayabusa 2 probe to Espaço
KYODO Kyodo / Reuters
Jaxa’s team believes that the material collected from inside the asteroid includes organic matter that, being protected from space radiation and other environmental factors, is in the same state it was in when the solar system was created. In this way, scientists must be able to learn more about the conditions that allowed life to appear on Earth.
“The materials that gave rise to the Earth, the oceans and life were present in the primordial cloud from which our solar system formed,” explained the Hayabusa 2 team in a presentation on the project in 2018. “[A matéria]remains today in primitive bodies [asteróides do tipo C, ricos em carbono, como o Rygu] that’s why taking samples from these bodies for analysis can inform you about the origins and evolution of the solar system. “
“I am very interested in seeing the substances,” he said. Makoto Yoshikawa, the Japanese scientist responsible for the mission, at a press conference this Saturday. “We can have access to substances that will give us clues about the birth of the planet.”
In 2010, Hayabusa 2’s predecessor was the first probe to send a capsule containing pieces of the interior of an asteroid to Earth.
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