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The space probe examined an asteroid located at a distance of 340 million kilometers from Earth.
The capsule, which was detached from the Japanese space probe Hayabusa-2, landed around 8:15 p.m. from Kiev by parachute on the territory of the Woomera restricted area in South Australia. This was announced during the broadcast on the YouTube channel of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA.
It was very early in the morning at the landing site, so darkness interfered with the filming of the video. An expedition made up of 73 Japanese specialists was waiting for the probe. The search for the capsule will begin at dawn.
The capsule dislodged from the probe approximately five hours before landing. The parachute opened at an altitude of about 10,000 meters.
The soil samples were taken from the asteroid, which at that time was at a distance of 340 million kilometers from Earth.
After dropping the capsule, he maneuvered away from Earth. They want to use it to study the surface of another asteroid, 1998 KY26, orbiting between Earth and Mars.
The asteroid 1998 KY26 is a rapidly rotating rock orbiting the Sun, sometimes appearing in the path of our planet. According to JAXA, the round asteroid has a diameter of about 30 meters and makes one revolution on its axis in just 10.7 minutes.
The Hayabusa-2 probe was launched in December 2014. It was close to the asteroid Ryugu from June 2018 to November 2019 and successfully landed there twice. During one of them, it made an explosion to locate the ground in the depths of the asteroid.
