Hayabusa 2 Asteroid Probe Postponed By Weather Until Early December

As reported by The Register, Japan's Hayabusa 2 mission to mine (or at least sample) an asteroid, which was to have been launched Saturday, has been delayed by weather, until a time no earlier than Monday, Dec. 1st (and from JAXA's web site, it appears that Dec. 3rd is the current target): If all goes to plan, the space probe will lift off next month and fly out to asteroid 1999JU3 by mid-2018 using ion engines. The craft will orbit the rock before dropping a bomb onto the surface. The resulting blast should leave a hole [in] the asteroid. The probe will then land and dig around in the rubble for material from below the surface using a "sampler horn". The probe will then take off again and head for home carrying its booty, and is due to return in 2020 or slightly later.

Comments

nice incremental refinement of the mission

[Trepidity]

The first Hayabusa mission, also by the Japanese space agency, successfully returned a small amount of material taken from the surface of a comet. Blasting to extract some more material seems likely to add additional scientific data, while building on technology and a mission profile that has already been successfully used once.

TIE Bomber?

[spiritplumber]

So you could call it an ion-engine bomber? (And now I'm off to try to recreate this mission in KSP).

Best of luck

[hcs_$reboot]

At least more luck than Akatsuki, missed Venus orbit, and Nozomi, missed Mars orbit.