Humans leave their mark on a nearby asteroid for the first time

Abdul Hakim Mahmoud

The Japanese space agency JAXA on April 25, 2019, first published the image of the crater created by the unmanned spacecraft Hayabusa II, launched by asteroid Ryugo earlier this month. The event that was suspended by the European Space Agency (ESA) in a statement that humanity left its mark for the first time on an asteroid from near-Earth asteroids.

The Ryugu asteroid is located between Earth and Mars 340 million kilometers from Earth and is about 900 meters in diameter. The asteroid, discovered on May 10, 1999 by astronomers at the Lincoln Project for Near-Earth Asteroids, was officially named Ryugo in 28 September 2015.

Hayabusa Mission 2
On 3 December 2014, Jaxa launched the Hiabusa 2 spacecraft from the center of Tengashima in south-west Japan to the vicinity of the Ryugo asteroid, which approached it in June 2018, with the aim of conducting a survey of the asteroid for a year and a half, To reach the Earth in December 2020.

On February 22, 2019, Hayabusa 2 landed on the surface of the asteroid, where it was able to detect wet minerals that would help scientists determine whether asteroids had carried water to Earth as believed or not.

Less than two months after contact with the Hayabusa 2 surface of the asteroid, and on April 5, the vehicle launched from a distance of 500 meters a copper-sized ball of baseball and weighing two kilograms on the surface of the asteroid, and for the first time in history an industrial pit on its surface has changed its topography, In an important historic step that could enable scientists to search for the origin of the earth and the solar system by analyzing soil samples retrieved from the surface of the asteroid, as scientists believe that the asteroid Ryugo near the Earth carries the secrets of the birth of the solar system.

Jaxa plans to return Hayabusa 2 back to the same location on the Ryugo asteroid later, when the dust and debris settle, to observe from above and collect other samples from the asteroid's interior which have not been exposed to sunlight or cosmic rays. Scientists hope this will contribute to knowledge The history of the asteroid and the history of our planet.

Complete a previous task
It is noteworthy that the Japanese space agency had launched several years ago a spacecraft called "Hayabusa" - which means in Japanese "Shaheen" - as an unmanned spacecraft, designed to take earth samples from a near-Earth asteroid called "Itawaka 25143," and return to Earth For further study, after it was launched on 13 May 2003.

Hayabusa reached its target on asteroid Itawaka in mid-September 2005. After arriving at the asteroid, the craft studied its shape, color, rotation, density, surface surface and chemical composition, and landed on its surface in November 2005, collecting a number of samples in the shape of Small grains of asteroid soil, and then returned to Earth on 13 June 2010.