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For several months now, the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) has installed robots on the surface of asteroid known as Ryugu. Hayabusa-2 "mothership" sent the bots down to study the surface of the space rock and send it back to Earth, and we got the pictures shortly after they arrived.
Now that JAXA is preparing for the most daring maneuver of the entire mission – a touch that will allow Hayabusa-2 to return to a sample of rocks before returning to Earth – the space agency displays several great pictures of its own ditch.
The images captured a small "jumper" that JAXA considered suitable for exploring the asteroid. The weight on the rock surface would be too low to allow wheel trenches, so JAXA decided to use small tunnels that actually move from one place to another, thus taking pictures on the go. The result is a whole bunch of photos of a very, very rocky landscape.
JAXA was really shocked about how the surface of the asteroid looked like rocky, and the mission team was forced to postpone the maneuvering of the touch, just because they need extra time to decide where to land.
Picking up a safe landing site is crucial for the ultimate goal of raising the Hayabusa-2 probe from the surface and eventually returning to Earth. Any damage that the spacecraft had during its landing would seriously jeopardize it.
Source: JAXA
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