{"id":93444,"date":"2019-07-11T09:42:26","date_gmt":"2019-07-11T16:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/a-japanese-spacecraft-just-grabbed-more-rocks-from-the-asteroid-ryugu"},"modified":"2019-07-11T09:42:26","modified_gmt":"2019-07-11T16:42:26","slug":"a-japanese-spacecraft-just-grabbed-more-rocks-from-the-asteroid-ryugu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/a-japanese-spacecraft-just-grabbed-more-rocks-from-the-asteroid-ryugu","title":{"rendered":"A Japanese spacecraft just grabbed more rocks from the asteroid Ryugu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-japanese-spacecraft-just-grabbed-more-rocks-from-the-asteroid-ryugu.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Japanese spacecraft landed on the asteroid surface.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>\n<a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/f\/612182\/japan-is-about-to-land-two-rovers-on-the-surface-of-an-asteroid\/\">Hayabusa2<\/a> has collected a second sample from the asteroid\u2019s surface. It could give us a unique insight into how the early solar system was formed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The procedure:<\/strong> After a few hours of maneuvering, the spacecraft touched down on Ryugu\u2019s surface at 9:15 p.m. US Eastern time yesterday. It then fired a bullet into the asteroid and collected some of the debris stirred up by the shot. The Japanese space agency JAXA <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/haya2e_jaxa\/status\/1149135502928277505\">tweeted<\/a> that the mission had been a success and that the space probe had now left the surface again. It\u2019s the second sampling mission after a <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/f\/612986\/japans-hayabusa-2-spacecraft-is-about-to-fire-bullets-into-an-asteroid\/\">similar one in April,<\/a> and it required particularly careful preparations, because any problems could cause the materials gathered during the first operation to be lost. In April, Hayabusa2 had also fired a copper bomb into the asteroid\u2019s surface to expose the rocks beneath, in anticipation of today\u2019s mission.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Next steps:<\/strong> Hayabusa2 is scheduled to return to Earth at the end of this year, but before it does it has a final task: deploying a smaller rover called MINERVA-II2 later this summer. Its primary goal will be to explore in an environment where there is very little gravity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Japanese spacecraft landed on the asteroid surface. Hayabusa2 has collected a second sample from the asteroid\u2019s surface. It could give us a unique insight into how the early solar system was formed. The procedure: After a few hours of maneuvering, the spacecraft touched down on Ryugu\u2019s surface at 9:15 p.m. US Eastern time yesterday. It [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":466,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1635,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/466"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}