This morning, a Japanese space probe deposited two tiny rovers on an asteroid nearly 200 million miles from Earth. The vehicle is Hayabusa2, and the rovers were the first in a series of robots that the vehicle will throw at the asteroid’s surface over the next few months.
Operated by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Hayabusa2 is tasked with grabbing a sample from an asteroid named Ryugu and returning those materials to Earth. The spacecraft launched in 2014 on top of a H-IIA rocket and arrived at Ryugu in June. It will grab multiple samples from the asteroid in the year ahead before heading back to our planet late nest year.
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