Japanese Probe on a Mission to Blow Hole in an Asteroid
Japan's space mission could help solve cosmic mysteries.
— -- A Japanese probe is hurtling through space on a six-year mission to blow a hole in an asteroid and bring rock samples back to Earth.
The mission, called Hayabusa2, lifted off earlier this month for the start of a journey that could ultimately yield new insights about the formation of the solar system.
The probe comes on the heels of Japan's Hayabusa mission, which collected samples from a small asteroid and returned the to earth in June 2010, according to NASA.
Hayabusa2 is scheduled to reach its target in mid-2018. The plan is then for a small mechanism to remove itself from the probe and shoot a projectile into the asteroid, blasting open a crater several feet in diameter.
The space probe will then collect samples from the crater.
Hayabusa2 will spend about a year and a half studying the asteroid before it is scheduled to return to Earth in late 2020.
The mission comes just as the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft successfully landed its probe Philae on a speeding comet, a decade after the mission was launched.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.