Japan launches its Hayabusa 2 asteroid-exploring space probe

Today, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully launched Hayabusa2, kicking off a six-year sample return mission to the asteroid 1999 JU3, a primordial C-type asteroid thought to be rich in water and organic materials. The agency already has plenty of practice with wrangling asteroid samples. In June 2010, the original Hayabusa spacecraft delivered flecks of asteroid 25143 Itokawa safely back to the Earth, capping off of seven-year journey. Hayabusa remains the first and only successful asteroid sample return mission (NASA’s Stardust mission achieved similar results, but with a comet, Wild-2). The samples returned in 2010, consisting of 1534 dust particles, revealed that Itokawa was ripped apart at one point, which yielded insights about how to break up an asteroid that might be on a collision course with Earth. It also represented the first steps towards asteroid-mining, which is already being bandied about as a major industry of the future.