Japan's Hayabusa2 probe makes 'perfect' touchdown on asteroid

Japan has been going good work in space probes and no lots of other countries haven't done all this years ago.. some of the work they have been doing is quite pioneering.

To explore and understand is at the very fabric of being human, why walk over the horizon, why swim or sail to that next island...I would prefer a world where we explore share and celebrate scientific triumphs, especially peaceful ones like this.. not only this but as we deplete easy to access resources on earth astroid collection or mining may be important to humankind future.

Very significant accomplishment.

Great job and in no way a waste of money (May very well be the opposite in fact)

Their office looks nothing like what we are used to seeing in hollywood movies. Looks more like a high school computer classroom

To my knowledge, there are 3 asteroid sample-return missions.

Hayabusa brought less than 1 mg of samples. 2010.

Hayabusa2 will bring 3 samples from 3 different locations on Ryugu. Total about 100 mg. 2020.

OSIRIS-REx will bring about 2000 mg from 1 location on Bennu. 2023.

All of this is VERY cool. Bennu and Ryugu are similar types of asteroids, so having samples from both will suggest similarities and differences between those types of asteroids.

Space is hard.

Good that some countries still do deep space research and share their findings

Great news! The Hayabusa 1 kind of skrewed up at the last moment. Hopefully the payload can come back to earth, but beware of those deadly space viruses -- we could be populating the earth with alien species.

Congratulations Japan!

But really, scientific advances are accomplishments for all mankind.

Joe YanToday  09:32 am JST

Their office looks nothing like what we are used to seeing in hollywood movies. Looks more like a high school computer classroom

No, I would say that the space agency's mission control room looks like ... a space agency mission control room.

The fact that it doesn't look like a Hollywood movie is a negative reflection on Hollywood -- not on the space agency.

I've worked in multiple mission control rooms - FCRs and POCCs. I've helped write software that ran in all NASA control centers around the world, in partner centers, and on both the shuttle and space station.

I've never been near the Japanese Space agency.

The ones you see on TV from NASA are setup in a very specific way and dedicated for mission support which includes training for missions. But there are hundreds of other people around the world seeing the same data, nearly real-time, using the same kinds of computers, running the same software. The protocol uses for sharing the real-time data is called ISP. It has changed data sharing worldwide. The US military uses it for wargames (can't tell if you are fighting a real tank/aircraft or a computer generated one). Online games use it (NASA software is public domain), for things like WoW and all the other massive online games with millions of players daily. There may or may not be a fancy "console" setup. Some have tower-like computers under a desk with a few monitors on top for each work location. The desks might be re-arranged for the cameras if the work locations are the persons normal work place. You just never know.

Plus, whenever something important to a mission is about to happen, about 4x more people "show up" than would normally be there. NASA controls access to their FCR to prevent that problem. There are plenty of other rooms nearby with a huge screen packed by people who have access to the building. The more missions that happen at a space agency, the more likely these extra access controls will become important.

Haybusa did nothing special; Eros, (a comet, turned asteroid), near-Earth was far more challenging.

Even China landing a rover on the Moon; never mind it was done 50 years later, and the Moon is right there.

So what if Ryugu is a tiny rock 300 million kilometres (185 million miles) from Earth?