The First Photos From The Surface Of An Asteroid

Last week Japan’s Hayabusa 2 probe successfully delivered the first of 3 sets of rovers to the surface of the asteroid Ryugu, proving us the first photos from the surface of an asteroid.

Hayabusa 2 is one of those many current space mission which I’ve simply never covered. It flew “under the radar” so to speak until last week when I saw updates on the mission being shared on Twitter by Dave from EEVBlog. The probe was due that night to release the first set of rovers to the surface of the asteroid, Rover-1A, and 1B. Due to the quite low gravity of the asteroid Ryugu instead of using a typical wheeled drive system, they move via hopping, and it was during one of these hops that the first photos taken “from the surface” of the asteroid were taken.

At some point, I should go over the Hayabusa 2 mission, but for now, I just thought it worth sharing these tweets from JAXA containing some of these amazing photos from the surface of Ryugu. More to come, as always.

If you want to read up, or see more information on the mission currently (albeit in Japanese) the links below will give you plenty of info on this absolutely amazing mission which is going on as we speak. Honestly, it’s probably the most interesting thing in space going on right now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa2

http://www.hayabusa2.jaxa.jp/

 

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