Japan’s asteroid probe seized a ton of material with its second attempt – BGR

• The asteroid probe Hayabusa2, sent by the Japanese space agency JAXA, made two attempts to collect material from the surface of the space rock Ryugu.
• As the now returned samples show, the initial attempt collected fine particles and sand material, but the second attempt was much more impressive.
• JAXA describes the second sample to include rocks as large as half an inch, and they are very hard.

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The asteroid probe from Japan, Hayabusa2, lasted a long, long time. Flying to and from the asteroid Ryugu took many months, and the time the spacecraft spent in orbit around the asteroid was long in itself. The biggest risk for the spacecraft – and one of the mission’s main objectives – was to bring asteroid samples back to Earth.

It completed the task a few weeks ago, and Japan slowly began to reveal information about the monsters that collected the sin. The first revelation was somewhat overwhelming and revealed black, charcoal-like dust and small pebbles from the first attempt at sampling. After JAXA unveiled its second series of asteroid sample material, we can say with certainty that the mission was a huge success.

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As Komo News reports, the most recent version of the asteroid samples gives us a much clearer picture of what Japanese scientists will be working on in the coming months and years. The second sample looks particularly promising, with larger pieces of rock appearing to be very hard, according to JAXA.

The differences in the sample material are attributed to the different conditions under which it was collected. The first sample was picked up when Hayabusa2 briefly touched the asteroid, so that it was mostly dust and smaller pebbles from the surface. For the second sample, the JAXA team actually used Hayabusa2 to launch a projectile at the asteroid and blow a hole in the surface so that material could be collected in the rock.

The fact that the second sample contains large and small rocks indicates that the rock of the asteroid varies in terms of hardness, according to JAXA spacecraft scientist Tomohiro Usui. The asteroid samples are currently being studied in a somewhat comfortable way, with observations, but the much more in-depth studies on the material and what the rocks may contain will happen over many months and maybe even years.

Meanwhile, the asteroid probe is not finished with its work. after the monsters were unloaded on earth, sin again endangered space. It’s on its way to another asteroid that JAXA wants to study, but it’s going to take a little longer to reach. The journey to the asteroid will take 11 years, so we will not hear much about it for some time.