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Japan's Two Hopping Rovers Successfully Land On Asteroid Ryugu (space.com)
sharkbiter shares a report from Space.com: The suspense is over: Two tiny hopping robots have successfully landed on an asteroid called Ryugu -- and they've even sent back some wild postcards from their new home. The tiny rovers are part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hayabusa2 asteroid sample-return mission. Engineers with the agency deployed the robots early Friday (Sept. 21), but JAXA waited until today (Sept. 22) to confirm the operation was successful and both rovers made the landing safely.
In order to complete the deployment, the main spacecraft of the Hayabusa2 mission lowered itself carefully down toward the surface until it was just 180 feet (55 meters) up. After the rovers were on their way, the spacecraft raised itself back up to its typical altitude of about 12.5 miles above the asteroid's surface (20 kilometers). The agency still has two more deployments yet to accomplish before it can rest easy: Hayabusa2 is scheduled to deploy a larger rover called MASCOT in October and another tiny hopper next year. And of course, the main spacecraft has a host of other tasks to accomplish during its stay at Ryugu -- most notably, to collect a sample of the primitive world to bring home to Earth for laboratory analysis. JAXA tweeted on Saturday: "We are sorry we have kept you waiting! MINERVA-II1 consists of two rovers, 1a & 1b. Both rovers are confirmed to have landed on the surface of Ryugu. They are in good condition and have transmitted photos & data. We also confirmed they are moving on the surface."
In order to complete the deployment, the main spacecraft of the Hayabusa2 mission lowered itself carefully down toward the surface until it was just 180 feet (55 meters) up. After the rovers were on their way, the spacecraft raised itself back up to its typical altitude of about 12.5 miles above the asteroid's surface (20 kilometers). The agency still has two more deployments yet to accomplish before it can rest easy: Hayabusa2 is scheduled to deploy a larger rover called MASCOT in October and another tiny hopper next year. And of course, the main spacecraft has a host of other tasks to accomplish during its stay at Ryugu -- most notably, to collect a sample of the primitive world to bring home to Earth for laboratory analysis. JAXA tweeted on Saturday: "We are sorry we have kept you waiting! MINERVA-II1 consists of two rovers, 1a & 1b. Both rovers are confirmed to have landed on the surface of Ryugu. They are in good condition and have transmitted photos & data. We also confirmed they are moving on the surface."
It sounds like they will have material from an asteroid back some two years earlier than NASA!
Pretty exciting though that potentially we could have material from two different asteroids to compare. I've not looked into the NASA mission, hopefully they are also getting a ways down inside the asteroid... would be interesting to see a comparison of the two missions and what capabilities each had.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Japanese space agency's budget ... is far less than that of NASA, Roscosmos and the ESA. This mission is a remarkably ambitious example of doing more with less.
Considering what their relatively puny budget, Japan's space program is arguably the most advanced in the world.
They tried all sorts of new stuffs, such as this one:
A low cost version of the rocket which can be quickly assembled, with off-the-shelf parts commonly used by many other electronic industries
While the above rocket ended as a failure, it does illustrate the Japan's willingness to 'think outside of the box' - which, unfortunately, has been critically lacking in NASA and other space agencies, from Russia to India to Europe to China.
Don't make any sudden moves and no one floats away!
The "rovers" hopping mechanism would barely make them twitch in Earth gravity - on Ryugu it results in 15-meter hops. That may last something of order of an hour too.
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