Japan’s asteroid raider nears its prey

The feature-packed Hayabusa2 explorer spacecraft is preparing to touch down on the Ryugu asteroid and land four rovers onto its surface

High gain antennas

Star trackers

Re-entry capsule Carries sample ore back to Earth

MINERVA-II-1  Rovers 1A and 1B

Sampler horn Sep 2018/Feb 2019: Two touchdowns. Horn takes samples from surface

MINERVA-II: Three rovers carry small cameras and thermometers

MASCOT: Fitted with camera, radiometer, infrared spectrometer and magnetometer

Rovers move by flipping over using internal pendulum

30cm

Nov 2019: Craft departs Ryugu, landing at Woomera Test Range, Australia, in Dec 2020

Solar arrays 1.4-2.6kW of electricty

5.2m

Ion engine

MASCOT lander 

MINERVA-II-2 rover

Small Carry-on Impactor

Mar-May 2019: Third touchdown. Impactor fired into comet, creating crater to allow collection of subsurface material

Venus
Mars
Mercury Sun
Earth
Ryugu

Explosive charge


Copper liner fired at 2km/s into surface

Ryugu 880m wide



Sources: JAXA, ESA, NASA, Spaceflight101    Illustrations not to scale   © GRAPHIC NEWS