Europlanet webinar: Hayabusa2 Mission to the Asteroids

How do you send a spacecraft to an asteroid thousands of miles kilometres away and return to Earth with some samples? This month Dr. Elizabeth Tasker is an associate professor and science communicator at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will join the Europlanet Webinar series to discuss the Hayabusa2 mission.

Hayabusa2 is a space mission led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to visit an asteroid and return a sample to Earth. The spacecraft launched in 2014 but is now rapidly approaching asteroid Ryugu. Ryugu is a C-type asteroid, meaning that it formed in the early days of the Solar System and has changed very little during that time. This makes the space rock kin to meteorites that rained down on the young Earth, possibly bringing water and the first organics to our planet. Hayabusa2 will arrive at Ryugu at the end of June (!) and will analyse the asteroid remotely, take three samples and drop a lander and three small rovers to the asteroid surface. It is due to return to Earth in 2020. While led by JAXA, there is strong European involvement in the mission, with the lander (MASCOT) being designed and built by the German and French space agencies, the same team that designed the Philae lander on the Rosetta mission.

Time/Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2018 at 11:00 CEST

Registration: https://goo.gl/forms/zcE7muAVoxEHk4Vo1

Link for the webinar: https://zoom.us/j/152979704