Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Touchdown!


Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a short video (in the link) of JAXA's Hayabusa2 landing (well, touching down and bouncing off of) on asteroid 162173 Ryugu. The vehicle has already fired a "bullet" into the asteroid to see if it is possible that a larger "bullet" will be able to collect a sample, has extensively imaged the asteroid, may land again, and will hang around for most of the year before meandering back to Earth with the collected samples.

Exciting times for robotic exploration!

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