Japan's Hayabusa2 probe makes second touchdown on distant asteroid | Hacker News Reader

Japan's Hayabusa2 probe makes second touchdown on distant asteroid

japantimes.co.jp

290 pointsUltramanoid23 comments

Only tangentially related but I'd like to share it as space nerds (like me) may love it:

https://mainenginecutoff.com/blog/2019/05/downlink

This is a small mac app getting real time satellite images, and using it as your wallpaper. One of the source is Jaxa's Himawari-8, hence the link.

Also, the podcasts from Anthony Colangelo (same page) are pretty good to keep up with the space industry

As GOES covers the US Coasts, and Himawari-8 Japan/East Asia/Australia, do you know of any geostationary satellites over Europe, from which the live images are available?

Does this fit the bill?

https://eumetview.eumetsat.int/static-images/latestImages.ht...

There is also desktop earth for non Mac users: http://www.anka.me/desktopearth.aspx

This is really cool. Thanks for creating it and sharing it. Already installed :)

The engineers (and press?) look so excited in that photo. Wonderful to have something positive on a national level to root for. While I'm happy for the USA's women's soccer victory, I suppose I prefer to root for the technical triumphs more. ;-)

One other thing to keep in mind: the fact the the spacecraft is still operational means that all those engineers will still have jobs tomorrow :)

That is a very good point that I had never though about. I wonder what sort of contingencies exist in the contracts for those engineers?

Congratulations to JAXA for this big achievement!

Where are the pictures / videos?

Here you are: http://www.hayabusa2.jaxa.jp/en/topics/20190711e_PPTD_ImageB...

It's curious that the images weren't deinterlaced properly.

I'm glad this mission seems to go way better than the previous one.

Big achievement. Mind bogglingly complex mission.

I wonder what it would take to attach a booster to an asteroid and bring it in earth orbit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_Redirect_Mission

I 'm surprised by the low cost:

> The mission cost was estimated by the Glenn Research Center at about $2.6 billion,

What could possibly go wrong?

Using asteroids/rocks as kinetic weapons is one of my favorite hard sci-fi tropes.

it would burn in the atmosphere?

Amazing! Looking forward to what they will find out once they start drilling.

Banzai!

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