On Wednesday, December 3 at 1:22 p.m Japanese Standard Time (Tuesday, December 2, 11:22pm EST), the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Space Agency (JAXA) will send a spacecraft to an asteroid to collect a sample and return it to Earth. Launch coverage should be available online, but here’s a link to their LiveStream feed.
There’s a lot about this mission to be excited about, not the least of which is that this is the second asteroid sample return mission for JAXA. That’s important because asteroids come in several varieties, each with their own chemical and mineral compositions, so a sample from just one asteroid is hardly enough to get a full picture of what the early solar system was like.
Like its predecessor, Hayabusa2 is in for the long haul. It’s mission will require six years, largely due to the complex dance around the inner solar system, which includes an Earth flyby next autumn, required to pick up enough speed to get out to the asteroid itself. JAXA has an animation which describes the path it will take to the asteroid and back to Earth.
Hayabusa2’s target is asteroid 1999 JU3, which is a C-type asteroid. That is, one that is composed of older, more primordial materials (including water and organics) that are believed to have “seeded” the Earth during its formation. Once there, Hayabusa2 will orbit the asteroid for a year, detonate a small bomb to create a crater, descend to collect a sample from underneath the crater, and deploy four – count ’em, four! – landers.
Talk about one hell of an ambitious mission! JAXA has a really nice 12-minute video which explains the mission in greater detail: