JAPAN’S space agency will attempt to land a robotic unmanned landing craft on the surface of an asteroid 300 million kilometers away from Earth next month. The Hayabusa-2 spacecraft is currently orbiting around the diamond-shaped asteroid Ryugu, which it reached in June after a three-and-a-half year journey. On Sept. 21, the spacecraft will deploy the first of two landers onto the asteroid itself, where they will gather samples and conduct experiments. A second lander will be launched on Oct. 3. Later in the mission, the spacecraft itself will land on the asteroid after blowing a small crater in it using explosives, so samples can be gathered from below the object’s surface which have not been exposed to space. According to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), if successful, this will be the “world’s first sample return mission to a C-type asteroid.” Japanese scientists are currently racing NASA for that historic achievement, with the U.S. agency’s own sample retrieval mission due to arrive back on Earth in 2023. Hayabusa-2 is due to return in 2020. (SD-Agencies) |