WORLD
Japan eyes new space mission to sample an asteroid
Baku, March 6 (AZERTAC). Space engineers in Japan are scoping out an ambitious follow-up to the country`s Hayabusa mission, which snagged samples from the asteroid Itokawa and returned them to Earth in 2010.
The successor spacecraft, known as Hayabusa 2, would carry out an aggressive study of another asteroid. The probe would drop off two landers, blast the asteroid with an impactor and send more samples back to Earth for close-up inspection.
Earlier this year, Tokyo-based NEC Corporation announced it had started designing the new asteroid explorer for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
The probe’s key mission is to collect and return samples from that rocky world, to help scientists better understand the origin and evolution of the solar system.
Hayabusa 2, propelled by an ion engine, would arrive at the asteroid in mid-2018, conduct a series of observations and operations and then return to Earth by the end of 2020.
The total cost of the mission is pegged at about $400 million — $150 million more than the original Hayabusa.
The budget boost is not surprising since Hayabusa 2 is going to be launched on Japan`s H2A rocket, which is larger than the M-V rocket used for Hayabusa. The new probe would also have a bigger payload and a longer operational stint, spending roughly one year at 1999 JU3 compared to Hayabusa’s three months of inspecting Itokawa.
It`s a much more scientifically aggressive mission than the first Hayabusa. They are applying all the lessons learned from that mission to Hayabusa 2," said Paul Abell, lead scientist for planetary small bodies in the Astromaterials Research & Exploration Science Directorate at NASA`s Johnson Space Center in Houston. He was a joint science team member on the Hayabusa mission.