On Dec. 5, the probe delivered a capsule containing pristine samples of the carbon-rich asteroid Ryugu to Earth. Now, just a month later, the probe is officially on the move toward another asteroid, in the early stages of an ambitious and protracted extended mission .
"[Ion engine operation begins!] Today on January 5, 2021, at around 12:00 JST, Hayabusa2 started powered navigation with three of the ion engines," mission team members wrote via Twitter . (Japan Standard Time is 10 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Standard Time, so the milestone occurred around 2 a.m. EST, or 0600 GMT).
Other things to check out:
NASA reveals asteroid is heading for 'near Earth' approach tomorrow | Science | News |
An asteroid which has been designated the name 2021 AX1 is gearing up for a close approach to our planet. NASA has revealed that the asteroid will make its closest approach to Earth on January 12. The asteroid was only discovered in the past few days by astronomers at the Mt Lemmon Survey in Tuscon, Arizona.
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The space rock will continue heading inwards towards the Sun, past Earth and Venus before orbiting the Sun and heading back out.
Asteroid travelling at more than 48,000 kilometres per hour set to whizz past Earth | Science |
A space rock is currently travelling at astronomical speeds through the solar system, and is set to come close to Earth in the coming days. The asteroid known as 2021 AL1 is approaching the orbit of Earth, and will swing by our planet on January 16.
The asteroid has journeyed past Mars on its way to Earth's orbit and will swing inside to Venus before heading back out.
It is travelling at a speed of 13.5 kilometres per second, or a staggering 48,600 kilometres per hour.
The economics of protecting the planet from an asteroid disaster : Planet Money : NPR
On a Friday morning two years ago, people in a city called Chelyabinsk in Siberia saw a bright light in the sky. And apparently, lots of people in Russia I guess have cameras mounted on the dashboards of their cars. So you can see tons of videos of this on YouTube, you know, as people are just driving down the highway, listening to the radio.
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SMITH: This made the news. People talked about it a lot. And then everyone sort of forgot about it except for a small group of scientists - because they knew something. They knew that this event was going to happen again. And if the next time the rock is bigger, if it comes at a slightly steeper angle, if it flies one morning over Moscow or New York City, millions of people could die.
And here's another article:
Citizen astronomers map near-Earth asteroid | Astronomy.com
In the battle to defend the planet from hazardous asteroids, amateur astronomers have taken on a new role — for the first time, helping to map a near-Earth asteroid (NEA), revealing its shape.
The effort came as a collaboration between researchers at the SETI Institute and 26 citizen observers from seven countries who observed the 1.2-mile-wide (2 kilometers) asteroid 1999 AP10. All of the observers were using an eVscope — a new "smart" telescope model produced by the startup Unistellar .
Remote sensing data sheds light on when and how asteroid Ryugu lost its water | Brown University
Rocks on Ryugu, a "rubble pile" near-Earth asteroid recently visited by Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft, appear to have lost much of their water before they came together to form the asteroid, new research suggests.
Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft snapped pictures of the asteroid Ryugu while flying alongside it two years ago. The spacecraft later returned rock samples from the asteroid to Earth. Credit: JAXA
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Last month, Japan's Hayabusa2 mission brought home a cache of rocks collected from a near-Earth asteroid called Ryugu. While analysis of those returned samples is just getting underway, researchers are using data from the spacecraft's other instruments to reveal new details about the asteroid's past.
You can track 2021's biggest asteroid, size of Golden Gate Bridge, to fly by soon - mlive.com
The biggest-known asteroid slated to whiz by Earth this year will make its approach on March 21. As far as size goes, this little fella is bigger than about 97% of asteroids in our solar system, but it's still pretty small when compared to the largest asteroids out there, according to spacereference.org .
So how big is it? About the size of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. It's roughly half a mile in diameter and comparable in length to the famous bridge - so about 1.7 miles long.
So 'asteroid' 2020 SO was actually 1960s space junk. It may be the first of many to come. | Space
The detective story of 2020 SO, an erstwhile asteroid now formally identified as a 54-year-old piece of space junk, sounds like a wild yarn today but may become the first installment in a long series of such puzzles.
The object dubbed 2020 SO was spotted in September by an asteroid survey, but there was always something a little fishy about the space rock. One NASA expert theorized simply from its orbit that it was likely an upper-stage rocket body from the 1966 launch of a lunar mission called Surveyor 2. By the end of November, additional observations of the object had cemented its status as decades-old space junk wandering back for a surprise visit of its planet of origin.
Happening on Twitter
Japanese asteroid-sampling probe begins long trek to next space rock https://t.co/v31MW7T2xd https://t.co/MyMTwSqCfE SPACEdotcom (from NYC) Mon Jan 11 23:41:33 +0000 2021
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