Japanese Space Agency Announces the Plan of Bombing Asteroid

Japanese space agency JAXA successfully landed a spacecraft on the asteroid. The spacecraft is named as Hayabusa 2, and it will return to earth after collecting the samples from the asteroid. But the comeback of the asteroid will be explosive for the Asteroid as JAXA is planning to bomb the asteroid to reveal what’s inside it. According to the plan, Hayabusa 2 Spacecraft will drop a small bomb, that will explode, and the spacecraft will collect the samples of the exploded fragments.

The blast will create a massive crater on the asteroid and the debris blasted from the bomb explosion will be collected for analyses. First time when the spacecraft landed on the asteroid, it fired a small bullet to make a small crater and then collect the debris as a sample. Now, when the Hayabusa 2 will initiate the comeback mission, it will drop a bomb with the speed of nearly a kilometre per second. The blast will create a crater with the diameter of 32-foot, which the spacecraft will collect for further examinations from scientists on the ground. Also, the spaceship will again visit the impact crater for further analysing, but if the safety is on the bet, then it’ll return without examining the cavity.

This is a risky mission for the spacecraft itself. But, if the Hayabusa 2 successful returns with the samples, then it would be the first mission to mine an asteroid in our solar system. NASA mined the asteroid in 2005, but it was not the bomb blast that caused the digging a crater. It’ll be a challenging mission, as Hayabusa 2 has to be around at the time of the explosion and later have to land in the same hole to collect the sample. JAXA engineer Takanao Saeki agreed that the mission is indeed challenging for everyone at JAXA.