Japan Space Probe Skims Asteroid in Test for Planetary Defence

Tokyo: A Japanese space probe flew past a near-Earth asteroid on Sunday to test a technology that could help protect the planet from space rocks.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) scientists had previously said the refrigerator-sized Hayabusa2 would fly within 800 meters (0.5 miles) of asteroid Torifune; A test run was conducted to see if such a probe could deflect a potentially dangerous space rock away from Earth.

The mission comes after NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into the 160-meter-wide asteroid Dimorphos in 2022, successfully changing its orbit around a larger space rock.

Hayabusa2, traveling at over 18,000 kilometers (11,185 miles) per hour, was not intended to collide with Torifune.

Instead, scientists wanted to evaluate whether they could precisely control the probe’s orbit in case it needed to make any deflections.

“At 18.35 (0935 GMT) … Hayabusa2 passed by Torifune and the spacecraft is operating normally,” a JAXA spokesman told AFP, declining to give his name.

Online footage provided by JAXA showed scientists clapping in the control room.

One of the scientists told publication JAXA: “I was nervous, I always felt nervous… But I’m really happy that we were able to see this through to the end.”

If it is confirmed that the space probe did indeed come within 800 meters of Torifune, the mission would be one of the closest flybys of a near-Earth asteroid ever.

“It’s as difficult as trying to shoot a one-yen coin somewhere in the region from Okinawa to Hokkaido,” JAXA’s Yuya Mimasu previously said, referring to Japan’s southernmost and northernmost islands.

– Bare rock or sand? –

Cameras onboard Hayabusa2 also record data from the asteroid’s surface, including its geographic features, texture and temperature, containing vital information for a potential planetary defense mission.

“Does the surface consist of bare rocks or is it covered with rocky areas or sandy beaches? Only images taken by a spacecraft can reveal this information,” project scientist Patrick Michel of the European Space Agency told AFP before the flight.

“If we want to deflect an asteroid by impacting it, the response won’t be the same if the asteroid is behaving like a sponge or if it’s acting like a very solid material,” he said.

The space probe’s mission does not rely on any real threat to Earth from an asteroid.

Hayabusa2, launched in 2014, has already excited scientists by landing on the Ryugu asteroid, about 300 million kilometers (185 million miles) from our planet, and collecting material from there.

Six years later, he returned precious samples from Ryugu (“dragon palace” in Japanese) to Earth, providing scientists with clues about what the solar system was like at its birth approximately 4.6 billion years ago.

After the Torifune mission, the space probe is expected to attempt a “rendezvous” with another asteroid called 1998KY26 in 2031 — a maneuver in which it will fly near or touch a space rock to collect detailed data.

Michel, the European Space Agency scientist, said Sunday’s ambitious flight was extremely valuable, even after the success of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).

“Given the diversity of near-Earth asteroids in size, shape, surface and internal features, each new image better prepares us.”