Spacecraft incoming! Japan鈥檚 Hayabusa 2 spacecraft is getting ready to聽release its first rovers on to the asteroid Ryugu. This kicks off a year-long campaign of dropping landers and taking samples before Hayabusa 2 heads back to Earth at the end of 2019.
The first two of four total landers will be dispatched together on 21 September, when they will be dropped from about 60 metres above the asteroid鈥檚 surface. The landers, collectively known as聽MINERVA-II, are 鈥渉oppers鈥� rather than rovers 鈥� a spinning cylinder inside each lander allows it to hop a few metres at a time in Ryugu鈥檚 weak gravity.
Each hopper is seven centimetres tall and 18 centimetres across, with a mass just over one kilogram, and covered in solar panels to power its hopping and scientific instruments. They are each fitted with two types of camera and a thermometer.
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The data from the hoppers, as well as the three sets of samples the spacecraft will collect over the next year, will help us figure out how Ryugu formed and what exactly it is made of. Because asteroids like Ryugu are remnants of the larger rocks that built up into planets in the early solar system, studying to the asteroids may lead to an understanding of Earth鈥檚 history.
鈥淚f we find water and organics are similar to that on Earth, it will be evidence that space rocks like Ryugu are how we all began,鈥� says JAXA鈥檚 Elizabeth Tasker. 鈥淗ayabusa 2 hopes to bring back a piece of our history when it returns with samples from Ryugu.鈥�
