The life of an asteroid is lonely. The rocks spend eons drifting through the cold vacuum of space.
But on Wednesday, the asteroid Ryugu welcomed a special visitor: Japan’s Hayabusa-2 probe successfully landed on the asteroid’s surface at 21:06 ET(01:06 UTC on Thursday).
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched Hayabusa-2 into space in December 2014. Its mission: explore and collect samples from Ryugu ... Read even more