The Japanese will send a descent probe to the asteroid 1999 JU3 at the end of this year.

I think many representatives of the community are eagerly awaiting the moment when the Philae descent probe leaves the hospitable board of the Rosetta station, and finally falls on the body of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This should happen in November 2014, that is, to wait not so much time.

So what can we expect after the completion of this mission? It turns out there is something to wait for: at the end of this year, the Japanese are going to send their own landing probe to a distant celestial body. It is about asteroid 1999 JU3, and the probe Hayabusa-2 will go to it.
')
Space distances are extremely large, there are no warp engines at all, so it will take four years to wait. Already in 2018, the Hayabusa-2 device should reach the goal. Upon arrival at the asteroid, the probe should take samples of the asteroid's soil, and after 2 years, by 2020, deliver these samples to the ground.



Why the probe is called Hayabusa-2, since it has a predecessor, respectively, Hayabusa . The first probe was successfully launched in May 2009 for sampling from the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa. It is worth noting that the launch was carried out from the Japanese cosmodrome, using the Japanese Mu-5 launch vehicle.



The project implementation was repeatedly threatened due to external factors: flares on the Sun, problems with photocells and other problems affected the timing of the delivery of samples to Earth. Despite all these problems, the delivery was successfully completed in June 2010.



Asteroid 1999 JU3 is quite large - its diameter is a little less than a kilometer. This asteroid is near-earth, from the same group as Itokawa asteroid. Samples of solid material will be collected from the 1999 JU3 surface (in the first mission, only dust from the asteroid's surface was collected). Sampling will be carried out using a 30-centimeter device, which is called the impactor. The impactor is shot from the space station, and when it collides with the surface it produces an explosion. The result of the explosion should be a meter crater, which will allow to take samples from the subsurface layers of the asteroid, which were not affected by solar radiation.

Hayabusa 2 has two sampling methods. The first is the shelling of the asteroid's surface with special projectiles, for the formation of dust with its subsequent selection. And the second method - the release of silicone-containing material into the crater, for the selection of additional samples.

The purpose of the mission is to study the early evolution of the solar system. The same goal and Rosetta.

Via ibtimes