Japan's Hayabusa2 probe to conduct flyby of Torifune asteroid

114 points - last Sunday at 10:33 AM

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pmontra today at 3:03 PM
The real title of the article is very different:

"Japan's Hayabusa2 probe completes flyby of Torifune asteroid"

The flyby already happened last Sunday.

onlypassingthru last Sunday at 2:42 PM
I'll never work in Mission Control, but the Hayabusa2 website lets me pretend I do. Kudos to whomever designed this website:

https://haya2now.jp/en.html

pavel_lishin today at 3:02 PM
> During the flyby, Hayabusa2 was expected to approach as close as 800 meters from the center of Torifune and to capture images of the asteroid while traveling at a relative speed of 5 kilometers per second.

Imagine the sort of work required to get clear photos of that. It would be hard to show up at work the next day if all you have is a blurry streak like you're taking photos on a rollercoaster with a disposable camera in 1993.

tjpnz today at 4:10 PM
Seems it was successful and they captured an image:

https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/science-nature/science/20260...

slicktux today at 2:50 PM
My favorite space probe is the European Space Agency Philae. It probes the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and actually landed on it. It was able to send back images of its surface. Amazing!