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What is Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission?

  • Posted By
    10Pointer
  • Categories
    Science & Technology
  • Published
    10th Dec, 2020

Hayabusa2 is set to return to Earth after 6 years of its launch, carrying with it samples from the one-kilometer wide Ryugu asteroid that orbits the Sun.

Context

  • Hayabusa2 is set to return to Earth after 6 years of its launch, carrying with it samples from the one-kilometer wide Ryugu asteroid that orbits the Sun.

What is the Hayabusa2 mission?

  • The Hayabusa 2 mission was to study the asteroid Ryugu and collect samples.
  • It deployed two rovers and a small lander onto the surface.
  • Hayabusa 2’s predecessor, the Hayabusa mission brought back samples from the asteroid Itokawa in 2010.
  • The mission is similar to NASA’s OSIRIS-REX mission that brought back samples from asteroid Bennu.

What is an asteroid?

  • Asteroids are rocky objects that orbit the Sun, much smaller than planets.
  • They are also called minor planets.
  • According to NASA, there are 994,383 known asteroids, the remnants from the formation of the solar system over 4.6 billion years ago.
  • Asteroids are divided into three classes. First, are found in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
  • The second group is of trojans, which are asteroids that share an orbit with a larger planet.
  • The third classification is Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA), which have orbits that pass close by the Earth. Those that cross the Earth’s orbit are called Earth-crossers.

Why they are asteroids?

  • To look for information about the formation and history of planets and the sun since asteroids were formed at the same time as other objects in the solar system.
  • To look for asteroids that might be potentially hazardous.

 

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