Posted on 06/25/2018 8:14:11 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) released several new images that Hayabusa2 snapped recently of the asteroid Ryugu, whose shape has now become clear. "From a distance, Ryugu initially appeared round, then gradually turned into a square before becoming a beautiful shape similar to fluorite (known as the 'firefly stone' in Japanese)," Hayabusa2 project manager Yuichi Tsuda wrote today (June 25) in a description of the newest photos, which the probe took Saturday and Sunday (June 23 and 24), from as close as 25 miles (40 kilometers).
"Now, craters are visible, rocks are visible and the geographical features are seen to vary from place to place," Tsuda added. "This form of Ryugu is scientifically surprising and also poses a few engineering challenges."
...
Hayabusa2 left Earth in 2014 and is scheduled to arrive at Ryugu — which is about 180 million miles (290 million km) from Earth at the moment — Wednesday (June 27) or thereabouts.
Other touchdown operations are planned in February 2019 and in April or May 2019. Additionally, Hayabusa2 will generate a crater with an impactor in March or April 2019, and do a second rover deployment in July. (Eventually, the mothership will deploy a total of three rovers and a lander onto Ryugu's surface.)
Hayabusa2 will also spiral down to collect samples from the fresh crater. If all goes according to plan, these samples will come down to Earth in a special return capsule near the end of 2020.
Such operations will be complicated somewhat by Ryugu's distinctive shape...
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
cool....
Corn Pops.
At 180 million miles, the probe has only traveled about 1/10th of the distance to Uranus.
No FR space thread would be complete without Uranus.
I hope it is the new DNC HQ!
Vid on the link site shows how it maneuvers. Pretty cool - a box shape, with an internal weight on a rotating arm appears to upset its CG so that it can “roll” and wind up on any side it wants.
Hopefully this is the gold asteroid that will make us all billionaires.
Wow!
Yeah, but is the pilot of the craft wearing an appropriately gender-sensitive shirt?
Barrel full of deadly Ah-Ji-No-Moto set to go off at end of meal.
Nah. Cap’n Crunch.
And the Klingons that orbit it.
Is that shiny structure on top a weapon turret?
“No FR space thread would be complete without Uranus.”
Gee... Thanks.
A well trained geisha can give you a truly wonderful Japanese pro....
Oh, wait a minute. Never mind.
Reet Neet - Thanks for posting !
The original Hayabusa mission ran into a host of potential mission ending failures and it prevailed in the end. Magnificent engineering !
And only in Japan do they write metal anthems to their space probes. Excellent summary of what went wrong starting at 3:25 but you can’t go wrong watching the whole thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i28iBZx-W_E
A lot of people don’t know the JAXA a few years back landed on an asteroid and came back to Earth with a sample of the asteroid landing in a remote area of the Australia outback.
Or maybe it contains a virtually inexhaustible supply of luckydaysium. That would enrich everybody w/o lowering its own value!
I hope it turns out to be a huge, solid gold, astronomical wonder.
You leave me out of this.
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