Japan's Hayabusa 2 mission lands on the surface of a distant asteroid

Devin Coldewey@techcrunch / 3 hours ago

The coolest mission you haven’t heard of just hit a major milestone: the Japanese Hayabusa 2 probe has reached its destination, the asteroid Ryugu, and just deployed a pair of landers to its surface. Soon it will touch down itself and bring a sample of Ryugu back to Earth! Are you kidding me? That’s amazing!

Hayabusa 2 is, as you might guess, a sequel to the original Hayabusa, which like this one was an asteroid sampling mission. So this whole process isn’t without precedent, though some of you may be surprised that asteroid mining is essentially old hat now.

But as you might also guess, the second mission is more advanced than the first. Emboldened by and having learned much from the first mission, Hayabusa 2 packs more equipment and plans a much longer stay at its destination.



More:
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/21/japans-hayabusa-2-mission-lands-on-the-surface-of-a-distant-asteroid/