Spacecraft capsule just landed in Australia.

[VK3DRB]

Hayabusa-2's capsule just landed. The spacecraft is off on another mission to another asteroid in space. The Japanese bloke who first picked it up will no doubt never forget that moment as long as he lives. Japanese technology and science at its finest... https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55201662



Worth watching for the footage, even if you don't speak Japanese...

[CJay]

Amazing.


Handy tip too, Google Live transcribe works really well for translating things like news broadcasts, let it hear the sound, then copy the resulting text and it'll offer to translate for you, this is a minute or two of the Japanese broadcast translated that way:

"The mission of Hayabusa2, which is expected to be a clue to elucidate the origin of the solar system and attracts the world's attention, JAXA has held a press conference earlier and explained the contents of the capsule.

 We are pleased to report that the Hayabusa2 capsules have been successfully recovered. We hope that the sample analysis of the elementary school student Ryugu will bring about results that approach the origin of the picture of the formation process of the solar system and the transportation of water to the earth.  We are here.  President Yamakawa of the prefecture, which started after 4:30 pm, reported the success of capsule collection and expressed his expectations for future research. Light as if it was confirmed in the night sky of Australia before dawn today.  A capsule dropped by Hayabusa2 from space toward the earth. It rushes into the atmosphere at a tremendous speed of about 12 km / s.

 I landed safely in the desert area of ​​Australia.

 I'm glad that it was stable as one of the entry into the atmosphere. It was really that beautiful experience master. Yes, we are also impressed. To commemorate the achievement of evacuation, a terrible sound was put in the bright red Daruma doll.

 The contents of this capsule are expected to contain fragments of the asteroid Ryugu. JAXA's recovery hanger capsule in Australia was discovered, and if recovery was successful, it will arrive in Japan the day after tomorrow, and full-scale analysis of the contents will begin.  A voice of joy from far above the success of the mission Mr. Soichi Noguchi, an astronaut staying at the ISS International Space Station, wrote this on his own SNS. Now, I have seen the loan of Hayabusa2 from ISS.  ..

 Six years have passed since the launch in 2014."

[VK3DRB]

It completely dwarfs the ham radio weather balloon experiment I was involved in about 25 years ago. This is real space age stuff with a big wow factor for technical aficionados.

What I would like to know is how the engineers guided to spacecraft to the asteroid. There is no homing mechanism, no GPS, and data latency was around 2.5 hours at its furthest point.

[SilverSolder]

It completely dwarfs the ham radio weather balloon experiment I was involved in about 25 years ago. This is real space age stuff with a big wow factor for technical aficionados.

What I would like to know is how the engineers guided to spacecraft to the asteroid. There is no homing mechanism, no GPS, and data latency was around 2.5 hours at its furthest point.

There almost has to be some independent robotics/AI involved?