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posted by mrpg on Saturday September 22 2018, @04:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the payload-for-science dept.

Hayabusa2 conducts MINERVA-II deployment on Asteroid Ryugu

The Japanese asteroid sampling mission Hayabusa2 – launched on December 3, 2014 aboard an H-IIA rocket from Tanegashima, Japan – completed its long flight to asteroid Ryugu (formerly 1999 JU3) before – on September 21 – achieving the milestone of deploying its two tiny MINERVA-II robots/rovers.

[...] The Hayabusa2 mission is intended to image and sample the asteroid 1999 JU3, discovered in May 1999, now known as Ryugu, and to return samples of the asteroid, including samples excavated from an impactor to collect materials from under the surface, to Earth for analysis in laboratories.

[...] Besides the primary and backup sample collectors, the mission includes three MINERVA "hoppers" similar to the one used on the original Hayabusa mission that will land at several locations on the surface to study these locations with cameras and thermometers.

An impactor (SCI) with a 2 kg pure copper lump (Liner) will be used to excavate a crater on the surface, and there will be a sub-satellite that will be released to observe the impact.

Images from MINERVA-II 1 deployment.

162173 Ryugu and Hayabusa2.

Also at BBC, The Register, Space.com (alt).

Previously: Hayabusa2 Approaches Asteroid Ryugu
Hayabusa2 Reaches Asteroid 162173 Ryugu


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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday September 22 2018, @04:08PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Saturday September 22 2018, @04:08PM (#738572)

    I think it's a little premature to making plans around "Planet 9" - we don't even have any conclusive hints that anything substantial exists beyond Neptune. I mean, statistically it almost certainly does, probably several of them - the Oort cloud should extend out a couple light years after all. But what hints that we have found suggest anything that does exist is so far beyond Pluto that, as you say, it will take at *least* many decades to get there. Possibly several centuries with current technology. So what's a few more years of waiting one way or the other? Either way the people who discover the planet will likely be dead before we get a close look at it. We'd really want to study it remotely for a while first anyway, to get a sense of what sort of instruments we'd even want on that probe.

    Plus, space-travel technology and launch infrastructure is advancing rapidly. Ion drives are leaving the lab, and those are going to *completely* change the game. A chemical rocket launched on the day of discovery would get passed by an ion drive launched decades later, long before it got anywhere near the planet. So why waste resources launching the first probe at all? We already know it will be hopelessly obsolete before it even reaches it's destination.

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