Context
- A Japanese spacecraft is nearing Earth after a yearlong journey home from a distant asteroid with soil samples. It is set to land in Australia.
About Hayabusa2 Probe
- It is an asteroid sample-return mission operated by the Japanese space agency, JAXA.
- It follows on from the Hayabusa mission which returned asteroid samples in 2010.
- It was launched on 3 December 2014 and rendezvoused with near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu on 27 June 2018.
- It surveyed the asteroid for a year and a half and took samples.
- It left the asteroid in November 2019.
- It carries multiple science payloads for remote sensing, sampling, and four small rovers that investigated the asteroid surface to inform the environmental and geological context of the samples collected.
Source: The Hindu