Touchdown

Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 touched down on the surface of Ryugu Friday — a kilometer-wide asteroid with an orbit that periodically brings it close to Earth as it circles the Sun.

And the probe has already completed the first big step of its primary mission: collect tiny rock samples to send home.

Congratulations on your successful touchdown, @haya2_jaxa! We're excitedly waiting for the telemetry and confirmation of sample collection. pic.twitter.com/iBeQHZxPsc

— NASA's OSIRIS-REx (@OSIRISREx) February 21, 2019

Upon landing, Hayabusa2 fired a metal bullet into the rock and scooped up some samples using its on-board “sampling horn.”

[TD1-L08E1] This is the navigation image received on 2/22 at around 5:30 JST. You can begin to see the shadow of the spacecraft. pic.twitter.com/P480UlwPqs

— HAYABUSA2@JAXA (@haya2e_jaxa) February 21, 2019

There was a delay of several hours while the Earth-bound team waited for the spacecraft to resume communications after firing the bullet — the connection broke off when the spacecraft made contact.

The surface of Ryugu was not what we expected. So our sampler team had to conduct an experiment to check we could still gather material from the asteroid surface when we attempt #haya2_TD touchdown this Friday! https://t.co/bCzvW2gwSr pic.twitter.com/XxJXETKB6N

— HAYABUSA2@JAXA (@haya2e_jaxa) February 18, 2019

Hop Around

It’s not the first time the spacecraft has landed on Ryugu. It released two “hopping” rovers in September of last year for its first visit and a third rover on a second mission in October.

Hayabusa2 will swoop in two more times to collect additional samples later this year. The second approach will hopefully roll out the same way today’s mission did. On its third sample collection mission, the spacecraft will fire a copper projectile into Ryugu to collect samples from the subsurface.

The collected samples will then return to Earth in a special return capsule at the end of next year.

READ MORE: Japanese Spacecraft Successfully Snags Sample of Asteroid Ryugu [Space.com]

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