Launch Of The Probe Expected Later This Year

The Japanese space agency JAXA has shown its asteroid hunting spacecraft to the public for the first time. Launch of the Hayabusa-2 probe is expected sometime later this year.

The French news service AFP reports that the spacecraft should reach its target, the 1999JU3 asteroid, sometime in 2018. Once there, it will fire a projectile into the body, scoop up pieces of the asteroid, and return them to Earth. The agency hopes to have the samples returned for analysis  sometime in 2020.

In a news conference, Hitoshi Kuninaka, project leader at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), said he is "grateful" that the spacecraft is nearly complete.

Hayabusa-2 is a follow-on spacecraft to the Hayabusa spacecraft that first gathered samples of an asteroid for JAXA in a seven-year mission described as "trouble-plagued." It returned to Earth with dust samples in 2010.

JAXA says that analysis of the materials could help determine the origins of the solar system.

(Image provided by JAXA)

FMI: http://global.jaxa.jp/