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posted by martyb on Thursday February 21 2019, @10:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the a-puck-made-of-tantalum? dept.

[Please accept my apologies for the late posting to the site. I *thought* I had it queued up with plenty of time, but somehow messed up somewhere. --martyb]

The Japanese Space Agency's Hyabusa-2 probe is about to touch down on the asteroid 162173 Ryuga.

A live stream of the event will be available here starting at 4:45pm ET

The asteroid-circling spacecraft won't land so much as delicately brush the surface of Ryugu. During the late stages of descent, the probe will fire a tantalum pellet at the asteroid surface. The 650-mile-per-hour collision will create a plume of dust and debris that Hayabusa-2 will attempt to scoop up with an instrument dubbed the Sampler Horn.

This is equivalent to a bit over 6x the speed of the fastest slapshot ever recorded in an Ice Hockey Rink.

This will be the first of three passes to collect rock and dust samples from the asteroid. Samples will be returned to Earth in 2020.

Also at phys.org and sciencenews.org


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by deadstick on Friday February 22 2019, @12:23AM

    by deadstick (5110) on Friday February 22 2019, @12:23AM (#804800)

    Hayabusa means "falcon". They had a WW2 fighter by that name, as well as the present-day motorcycle.

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