“Hayabusa 2” flies smoothly to the earth.

“Hayabusa 2” flew smoothly to the earth.

The Japanese probe “Hayabusa 2”, which departs from the asteroid “Ryugu” and heads for the Earth, is already 45,000 km away from the asteroid. In the future, the engine will be injected in two parts to aim for the earth.

“Hayabusa 2”, which has completed the exploration of the asteroid “Ryugu”, launched a full-scale injection of the main engine, the ion engine, on the 3rd of this month.

JAXA Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency held a press conference on the 19th, revealing that Hayabusa2 is flying smoothly toward the Earth, away from the asteroid "Ryugu", 45,000 km as of 19th. Did.

In the future, after the ion engine is injected until February next year, it will be stopped once and then again from May to September next year, aiming for the earth.

In addition, from October next year, we plan to precisely guide it with a small attitude control engine called a thruster and drop the capsule into the Australian desert from November to December.

In addition, as “Farewell Observation”, we received all the image data of the asteroid “Ryugu” that is moving away.

JAXA's Yuichi Tsuda project manager says, “If you do not inject the engine correctly, it will shift, so I want to proceed with the work accurately and return it without fail.”