{"id":539838,"date":"2026-07-08T20:43:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T20:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/539838\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T20:43:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T20:43:10","slug":"hayabusa-2-snaps-stunning-close-up-images-of-asteroid-torifune-during-flyby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/539838\/","title":{"rendered":"Hayabusa-2 Snaps Stunning Close-Up Images of Asteroid Torifune during Flyby"},"content":{"rendered":"

On July 5, 2026, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency\u2019s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft completed the first asteroid encounter of its extended mission, flying past the two-lobed near-Earth asteroid Torifune<\/a> and returning its close-up visible and thermal images.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a><\/p>\n

This image of the near-Earth asteroid Torifune was captured with the ONC-T instrument aboard JAXA\u2019s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft on July 5, 2026. Image credit: JAXA \/ University of Tokyo \/ Chiba Institute of Technology \/ Institute of Science Tokyo \/ AIST \/ Paris Observatory \/ IAC.<\/p>\n

Built by JAXA, Hayabusa-2 launched in 2014 on a mission to visit Ryugu, a carbon-rich near-Earth asteroid thought to preserve primitive material from the birth of the Solar System.<\/p>\n

After arriving<\/a> in 2018, the spacecraft spent more than a year mapping the asteroid, deploying<\/a> tiny \u2018hopping\u2019 rovers and the German-built MASCOT lander, and performing sampling operations.<\/p>\n

In April 2019, Hayabusa-2 fired a copper projectile into Ryugu to blast open an artificial crater. The mission scientists hoped to collect samples that had been shielded from billions of years of space weathering.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft later descended to gather some of that freshly excavated material.<\/p>\n

When the return capsule landed<\/a> in Australia in 2020, laboratory studies revealed that Ryugu\u2019s samples contained water-bearing minerals, organic molecules and other compounds that shed light on the chemistry present during the Solar System\u2019s formation about 4.6 billion years ago.<\/p>\n

Unlike many missions that end after delivering their cargo, Hayabusa-2 continued its journey.<\/p>\n

After releasing the sample capsule, the probe fired its engines once again, embarking on an extended mission to visit the near-Earth asteroid 1998 KY26<\/a> in 2031.<\/p>\n

Along the way, it is also scheduled to perform a high-speed flyby of the small asteroid Torifune (also known as 2001 CC21) in 2026.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a><\/p>\n

This thermal image of Torifune was captured with the TIR instrument aboard JAXA\u2019s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft on July 5, 2026. Image credit: JAXA \/ Maebashi Institute of Technology \/ Chiba Institute of Technology \/ University of Aizu \/ Hokkaido University of Education \/ AIST.<\/p>\n

The flyby took place on July 5 at 18:30 JST, when Hayabusa-2 sped past the asteroid at roughly 5 km per second.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft obtained visible-light images with its Optical Navigation Camera (ONC-T), showing that Torifune is an elongated, two-lobed asteroid resembling a snowman.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom about one hour before the closest approach, observations were also conducted using the NIRS3 (Near-Infrared Spectrometer), TIR (Thermal InfraRed Imager), and LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) instruments,\u201d members of the mission said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese observations continued until immediately before the closest approach to Torifune but could not be conducted after the spacecraft had passed the asteroid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt present, only part of the data acquired by the scientific instruments has been transmitted to Earth,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe remaining data will be transmitted to the ground during future operations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On July 5, 2026, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency\u2019s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft completed the first asteroid encounter of its extended…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[229368,4474,159978,61,60,27482,42404,95809,82,227246],"class_list":["post-539838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-2001-cc21","tag-asteroid","tag-hayabusa-2","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jaxa","tag-near-earth-object","tag-near-earth-asteroid","tag-science","tag-torifune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}