After the journey of 3.5 years, Japan’s Hayabusa2 has finally reached to its target. Hayabusa2 was launched in December 2014, and now it is arrived at Asteroid Ryugu to find out the truth of life on earth.

According to a statement by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), Hayabusa2 has arrived at the asteroid Ryugu and now maintained its position at 20 KM far from an asteroid. JAXA has mentioned that Hayabusa2 will explore Ryugu entirely over 18 Months.

Hayabusa2 Main Purpose

This space probe will return to earth by the end of 2020 with samples of Ryugu. The mission of Hayabusa2 is to collect some sample from the asteroid Ryugu which will be examined in order to find the truth of life on earth. Japanese agency will find out if this asteroid carries the simple sugar called Ribose which is present in the body of every living thing on earth.

Ribose can’t be formed on its own, and if they found the ribose on it, then it will be proven that the ribose present in our body is from outer space.

Project manager Yuichi Tsuda said to reporters, “ Today, we are at the beginning of a space science exploration that is unprecedented for humankind,“.

This probe will now be going to find out some useful spots on the asteroid to collect samples. Hayabusa2 is a successor of Hayabusa which was returned to earth in 2010 after collecting some dust samples from an asteroid. Agency told that the probe would also drop tin MINERVA-II rover robots which will collect the fundamental data about the surface of the asteroid Ryugu with the help of some sensors.

Hayabusa2 has travelled about 300 million kilometres in deep space to get to this asteroid named Ryugu. The primary purpose of Ryugu is to find out the origin of life, and it will be going to take around 1.5 years more to collect samples and come back to earth. Hayabusa2 mission costs $274 million which was quite a massive project.

JAXA officials said, “ From this point, we are planning to conduct exploratory activities in the vicinity of the asteroid, including [conducting] scientific observation of asteroid Ryugu and surveying the asteroid for sample collection,“.