Spacecraft that successfully 'bombed' an asteroid is close to home with valuable cargo - Fox News
A Japanese spacecraft that successfully "bombed" an asteroid after a journey of more than 3 billion miles through space is close to returning to Earth.The samples were collected in July 2019 and are believed to contain traces of carbon and organic matter in the asteroid soil samples. .
Makoto Yoshikawa, a Hayabusa2 project mission manager, said scientists are especially interested in analyzing organic materials in the Ryugu soil samples.“Organic materials are origins of life on Earth, but we still don(asterisk)t know where they came from,” Yoshikawa said.“We are hoping to find clues to the origin of life on Earth by analyzing details of the organic materials brought back by Hayabusa2.”.
3, 2014, Hayabusa2 arrived at Ryugu on June 27, 2018, when the asteroid was almost 170 million miles from Earth
Its journey back to Earth was shorter due to the current locations of Ryugu and Earth
The asteroid, which is roughly 180 million miles from Earth, is named Ryugu ("Dragon Palace" in Japanese) after an undersea palace in a Japanese folktale