2020 has been a good year for space exploration. It’s just that it hasn’t been a good year for almost everything else.
On May 30, 2020, SpaceX became the first private company to launch people into space, and the first time astronauts were launched from American soil since 2011.
On Oct 20, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft pulled off a stunning touch and go manoeuvre, collecting rock and dust samples from Asteroid Bennu.
Less than a week later, NASA announced that it had found water on the moon, lighting social media ablaze. It wasn’t puddles or lakes of water but rather scattered molecules of water. However, this is still an important discovery as it gives us further proof that water might not be as unique to the Earth as previously thought.
SpaceX capped a stellar year with its 100th successful Falcon 9 rocket just four days ago, on Dec 6. It also marked the 68th time the reusable Falcon 9 first-stage booster rocket had landed safely after launching its cargo into space – a technical achievement of such magnitude that many in the space industry thought it was impossible just a few decades ago.
Also on Dec 6, China, a potent up-and-comer in the new, budding space race, orchestrated an audacious, fully autonomous lunar-orbit rendezvous – a manoeuvre that’s never been attempted before. The Chinese Chang’e ascent vehicle collected around 2kg of lunar samples – the first lunar samples collected since the Apollo missions in the 1970’s – and successfully docked with the Chang’e spacecraft that was orbiting the moon.
But this feat of engineering was upstaged by an even more impressive achievement on the same day. About 220,000 km from the Earth, Hayabusa2, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) spacecraft ejected a capsule, sending it hurtling towards the Earth at a mind-boggling 35 times the speed of sound.
For context, the moon is 380,000 km from the earth so what Hayabusa did was essentially hurl the capsule from more than half the distance to the moon and hope that it would land at the designated spot as the calculations predicted it would. The capsule had no propulsion or control systems, which meant that once it was released, there was no way for course correction in case of even the slightest error. The smallest mistake could mean the loss of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, vital scientific samples and instruments.
But thankfully, it followed the plan to a tee. The 40-centimetre capsule – carrying precious, otherworldly cargo – dramatically entered the Earth’s atmosphere, initially turning into a 3,000-degree celsius fireball as it tore through the skies before parachuting into Woomera, Australia.
The capsule has been fondly dubbed “tamatebako” or treasure box in Japanese. It’s an apt name considering it’s carrying the first sub-surface sample of an asteroid ever to be collected – something that could potentially get us started on answering some of the most important scientific and philosophical questions humanity faces.
But its fiery, spectacular, successful landing merely marked the climax of an extraordinary space mission.
The spacecraft Hayabusa2 was strapped to Japan’s H-IIA workhorse launch vehicle and launched into space on Dec 3, 2014. Its destination was Asteroid Ryugu, which is a staggering 300 million km from the Earth. After three and a half long years, it finally reached its destination on June 27, 2018.
Its most impressive feat – one that’s never been done before – was successfully collecting pristine sub-surface asteroid samples. It did this by using its on-board Small Carry-on Impactor (SCI) – a 2 kg copper mass which it shot onto the surface of Asteroid Ryugu. On impact, it created a 10-metre large crater, exposing material that probably hadn’t seen the light of day since the asteroid coalesced millions or even billions of years ago.
Hayabusa2 then descended onto the impact crater and collected samples using the sampler horn on its underside. The samples collected are of immense value as Masaki Fujimoto, deputy director-general of the department of solar system sciences at JAXA, explains: “Ryugu is linked to the process that made our planet habitable. Earth was born dry; it didn’t begin with water. We think distant bodies like Ryugu came to the inner part of the solar system, hit Earth, delivered water and made it habitable. That’s the fundamental question we’re after and we need samples to solve that.”
The sub-surface samples collected are especially crucial as this is material that’s been untempered by space weathering, heat from the sun, and contact with the atmosphere, unlike the meteorites that land on the Earth. Hence these sub-surface asteroid samples have largely maintained their fidelity since their creation, which could make them as old as the solar system itself. Through them, we can peer into a primordial, ancient galaxy and maybe even glean clues into our very origins.
Another theory scientists are keen on putting to the test is panspermia – the hypothesis that life didn’t originate from our planet but was seeded by asteroids or even an alien civilisation. If they find organic matter in the sample, it could lend credence to the claim that life indeed was seeded here. This means that similar seeding events could have occurred in many other parts of the universe – strengthening the claim that the Earth and its inhabitants are not unique, but are rather just a part of the universal ecosystem that’s teeming with life.
In addition to being of incredible scientific value, studying asteroids near the Earth, such as Ryugu and Bennu, will prove indispensable for learning how to deflect or destroy asteroids that cross the Earth’s path – something that happens much more often than many realise. According to NASA, there are 4,700 potentially dangerous asteroids lurking near the Earth.
The most destructive in recent memory was the Chelyabinsk meteor in 2013 that exploded while making its way through our atmosphere. It damaged thousands of buildings and injured more than 1,200 people. Had it been any larger or any denser, it might have slammed into the Earth, causing widespread destruction.
And I’m sure that’s the last thing we want to see happening in 2020.
The writer can be contacted at [email protected].
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.