Cool mission. There was also landing on a comet a few years ago IIRC.
The original probe did land on an asteroid back in 2005 and is a testament to the engineer’s ability to deal with a host of unexpected problems that cropped up during the mission, any one of which could have doomed the mission.
You’ve gotta love the Japanese - they write love songs to space probes. The story of the original mission is told in the following song...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i28iBZx-W_E
It includes English captions and at about 3:20 there is a detailed list of all the failures that it overcame on it’s mission.
Here’s another version of the last song without any English translation but if you watch the first video you should understand what’s going on here...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiCS5Gv63m0
If these asteroid probes don’t seem exiting compared to the moon or Mars, these asteroids have trillions of dollars of metals, water, and everything we need to build cities in space. This will fund the expansion out into the solar system.
If these asteroid probes don’t seem exiting compared to the moon or Mars, these asteroids have trillions of dollars of metals, water, and everything we need to build cities in space. This will fund the expansion out into the solar system.