What is Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission?

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.