Hyperdrive
Japanese Probe Makes Asteroid Touchdown After 4-Year Space Chase
- Hayabusa 2 succesfully landed on Ryugu and took a rock sample
- The mission will bring the material back to Earth next year
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After a four-year chase, a probe from Japan’s space agency called Hayabusa 2, or “Falcon,” pounced on its prey 300 million kilometers away.
Around 8:00 a.m. on Friday Tokyo time, the space ship touched down on Ryugu, a 450-million-ton carbonaceous rock in an orbit between Earth and Mars, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. It was a precision landing on a patch of even ground six meters across, about the size of a baseball pitcher’s mound on a surface studded with boulders. Touchdown lasted only a few seconds, with the probe firing an explosive charge into the ground, collecting the ejected debris and lifting off.