Japan's Hayabusa2 Spacecraft Shoots Asteroid, Returns to Crime Scene

The Japanese space agency, JAXA, hopes to use its Hayabusa2 spacecraft to collect another sample from the crater they made on the asteroid Ryugu earlier this month. (Credit: Illustration by Akihiro Ikeshita (C), JAXA) Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft dropped an explosive onto its asteroid home, Ryugu, back on April 5, blasting a new crater into its rocky surface so it could investigate what lies beneath. Since then, the spacecraft has been in hiding around the asteroid’s far side, waiting for the dust to settle. Yesterday, it ventured out to survey the damage. The pictures Hayabusa2 returned reveal a crater roughly 66 feet across, larger than even scientists’ most generous expectations. They had worried about a hole only a few inches across, which would be difficult to study, and hoped they might find one as large as 30 feet across. The larger-than-expected crater is making scientists question their findings so far about ...