This image released by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) shows an explosive dropped from Hayabusa2 spacecraft to make a crater on the asteroid Ryugu Friday, April 5, 2019. Japan’s space agency JAXA said its Hayabusa2 spacecraft successfully dropped the “small carry-on impactor” made of copper onto the asteroid and collect its underground samples to find possible clues to the origin of the solar system. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, said Hayabusa2 dropped a small explosive box which sent a copper ball the size of a baseball slamming into the asteroid, and that data confirmed the spacecraft had safely evacuated and remained intact. Last month, JAXA announced that a group of scientists participating in the Hayabusa2 mission had detected hydroxyl-bearing minerals on the asteroid by analyzing near-infrared spectrometer readings by the spacecraft. The asteroid, named Ryugu after an undersea palace in a Japanese folktale, is about 300 million kilometers (180 million miles) from Earth.

Source: Washington Post April 05, 2019 03:55 UTC