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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Phys.org [phys.org]:

A Japanese probe began descending towards an asteroid on Thursday on a mission to blast a crater into its surface and collect material that could shed light on the solar system's evolution.
...
The so-called "small carry-on impactor", a cone-shaped device capped with a copper bottom, will emerge from Hayabusa2 on Friday, after the probe has arrived just 500 metres above the asteroid Ryugu.

The probe will then depart the area, and the impactor is programmed to explode 40 minutes later, propelling the copper bottom towards Ryugu, where it should gouge a crater into the surface of the asteroid that sits 300 million kilometres from Earth.

Meh, not the same without a plucky crew of oil drillers.

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