BFF-50 Japan space robots start asteroid survey

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JAPAN-SPACE

Japan space robots start asteroid survey

TOKYO, Sept 22, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – A pair of robot rovers have landed on an
asteroid and begun a survey, Japan’s space agency said Saturday, as it
conducts a mission aiming to shed light on the origins of the solar system.

The rover mission marks the world’s first moving, robotic observation of
an asteroid surface, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
(JAXA).

The round, cookie tin-shaped robots successfully reached the Ryugu
asteroid a day after they were released from the Hayabusa2 probe, the agency
said.

“Each of the rovers is operating normally and has started surveying
Ryugu’s surface,” JAXA said in a statement.

Taking advantage of the asteroid’s low gravity, the rovers will jump
around on the surface — soaring as high as 15 metres (49 feet) and staying
in the air for as long as 15 minutes — to survey the asteroid’s physical
features.

“I am so proud that we have established a new method of space exploration
for small celestial bodies,” said JAXA project manager Yuichi Tsuda.

The agency tried but failed in 2005 to land a rover on another asteroid in
a similar mission.

Hayabusa2 will next month deploy an “impactor” that will explode above the
asteroid, shooting a two-kilo (four-pound) copper object to blast a small
crater into the surface.

From this crater, the probe will collect “fresh” materials unexposed to
millennia of wind and radiation, hoping for answers to some fundamental
questions about life and the universe, including whether elements from space
helped give rise to life on Earth.

The probe will also release a French-German landing vehicle named the
Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) for surface observation.

Hayabusa2, about the size of a large fridge and equipped with solar
panels, is the successor to JAXA’s first asteroid explorer, Hayabusa —
Japanese for falcon.

That probe returned from a smaller, potato-shaped, asteroid in 2010 with
dust samples despite various setbacks during its epic seven-year odyssey and
was hailed as a scientific triumph.

The Hayabusa2 mission was launched in December 2014 and will return to
Earth with its samples in 2020.

BS/AFP/FI/ 2010 hrs