The Hayabusa-2 Spacecraft launch, scheduled for November 29, has been delayed until December 1.
The Hayabusa-2 robotic spacecraft is designed to travel to the asteroid 1999 JU3, a dark, rocky body with a diameter around 3,000 feet. This space rock, the size of a small mountain, occasionally comes closer to the Sun than our planet, although there is no danger of collision in the foreseeable future.
The asteroid probe is designed to search the small, rocky bodies for the most primitive building blocks of life. Many biologists believe life on Earth may have originated from complex organic molecules brought to our planet on asteroids or comets.
Asteroid JU3 is a C-type body, containing carbon compounds, including amino acids, along with minerals containing water.
"Knowledge of those materials help us not only learn about the solar system in terms of its early stages of formation, but it also helps us (discover) how life on Earth may have evolved and where the oceans of Earth may have formed," Paul Abell, a planetary scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center, said.
The origin of organic materials recovered from asteroids that fall to Earth is often uncertain. The complex molecules may have been brought to our planet inside the rocky body, or may have contaminated the meteorite after landing. Analysis of material from asteroids in space allows researchers an opportunity to study raw material that has never come in contact with terrestrial molecules.
The first Hayabusa, in 2010, flew to Itokawa, a S-type rocky asteroid, returning samples from the surface of the interplanetary body. That first mission inspired engineers to redesign the ion engine and navigational equipment for the 2014 launch.
"After carefully examining the weather conditions at an emergency meeting today, we have decided to conduct the launch on December 1 (Mon.) 2014. The launch time will be at 1:22:43 p.m. (The date and time are JST.) The launch may be delayed further depending on weather conditions and other factors," the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) reported in a press release.
Hayabusa 2 is expected to reach the asteroid JU3 in the summer of 2018, and the observatory will spend a year carefully analyzing the body, and collecting samples of the surface. The vehicle will be accompanied by four rovers able to travel over the asteroid, as well as an impactor that will crash into the space rock, in order to study material lying deeper, inside the asteroid.
A sample return capsule is due to land in Australia at the end of the year 2020.
Mission managers have created the hashtag #hayabusa2 for public messages of support for the robotic spacecraft.
