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The sampler horn fired blind - did five grams arrive before the battery died?
A sealed sampler horn fires blind into Ryugu's boulder-strewn surface in a nine-minute silence - did five grams arrive before the battery died?
The sampler horn fired blind - did five grams arrive before the battery died?
In this episode, we follow the tense, delayed-feed moments when Hayabusa2 closed on asteroid Ryugu and the team on Earth had to trust a blind sampling maneuver. We lay out the mission's design, the unexpected surface conditions, and the question that lingers: what did those recovered grains contain?
Date: December 6, 2020
Mission: Hayabusa2
Target: Asteroid Ryugu (1999 JU3)…
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