Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft has successfully dropped an explosive designed to make a crater on an asteroid and collect its underground samples to find possible clues to the origin of the solar system. Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft has successfully dropped an explosive designed to make a crater on an asteroid and collect its underground samples to find possible clues to the origin of the solar system. An explosive dropped from Hayabusa2 spacecraft to make a crater on the asteroid Ryugu (Jaxa via AP)The copper explosive is the size of a baseball weighing two kilograms. '”Hayabusa2 successfully touched down on a tiny flat surface on the boulder-rich asteroid in February, when the spacecraft also collected some surface dust and small debris. The craft is scheduled to leave the asteroid at the end of 2019 and bring surface fragments and underground samples back to Earth in late 2020.

Source: Irish Independent April 05, 2019 07:52 UTC