Thursday, 27 September 2012
In 2010, Japan completed its successful space mission Hayabusa (Falcon), in which a Japanese spacecraft, launched by the Japanese as the booster to hit the asteroid Itokawa and took a sample of his material, afterwards pulled in Australia capsule with soil Itokawa, that scientists are exploring to this day. But now, the Japanese government approved a new space mission Hayabusa-2. This time, run the ship in 2014 and make a rendezvous with the asteroid 1999 JU3 it should be in the middle of 2018.
Samples of the asteroid material is scheduled to deliver in late 2020. According to today's data, the asteroid 1999 JU3 has a diameter of 914 meters - a little more than Itokawa, and in addition it is almost perfectly spherical, while Itokawa was stretched. Like other space agencies, the Japanese Jaxa running low on funds and strict time limit , so here do not exclude the possibility that the Hayabusa-2 will be launched in the second launch window - in 2015, however, while the Japanese schedule fit. If you run the Hayabusa-2 will not work either in 2014 or in 2015, it will have to wait until 2024, when the asteroid will approach again a suitable distance.
Hayabusa-2 should be close to the asteroid 1999 JU3 and find organic molecules, similar to those billions of years ago may have been recorded on Earth and become the foundation on which life evolved.
Japanese experts point out that the development of the Hayabusa-2 they will take into account experience of the problems encountered with the Hayabusa-1. In the second version of the device will also attend a 30-centimeter capsule Impactor, which will have to make a small explosion on the surface of the asteroid and take samples of domestic material. In a sense, the mission of the Hayabusa-2 will be lighter than the Hayabusa-1 as the second unit will drop the capsule to the kilometer asteroid Itokawa but the area was only about 500 meters.
