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Space travel
The Japanese probe Hayabusa2 facing the spectacular end of the mission
After a space travel of over five billion kilometers, the Japanese space probe “Hayabusa2” is about to complete its spectacular mission. Six years after its departure from Japan to the Ryugu asteroid, it will return on Saturday evening (CET).
(sda / dpa)
As it flies past Earth, it will drop a capsule containing samples of the celestial body onto a South Australian desert. It is 4.6 billion years old material since the early days of the solar system, as explained by the head of the mission Makoto Yoshikawa of the Japanese space agency Jaxa.
After that, “Hayabusa2” has to set off on another mission and head for another asteroid near Earth. The probe is expected to arrive there in about 10 years. An earlier model of “Hayabusa 2” brought soil samples from an asteroid to Earth for the first time in 2010.
With the mission, scientists want to trace the origins of the solar system. “This is a historic moment for space research,” said Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla, chairman of the board of directors of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), involved in the mission. The spacecraft had collected samples from Ryugu’s surface and, for the first time, from an area below the surface of an asteroid.
As soon as the sample capsule has been separated from the probe and enters the Earth’s atmosphere, it is slowed down by the atmosphere when it generates a lot of heat. On Saturday, around 6.30pm (CET), a parachute is deployed about ten kilometers above Australia. Shortly thereafter, the capsule will land at the Woomera aerospace test site in southern Australia. Then it is brought to Japan.
The first analyzes of the material will begin in Japan next June. Japan’s Jaxa space agency will make some of the samples available to NASA and researchers from other countries in 2022.
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