On July 5, a spacecraft no bigger than a refrigerator zoomed past an asteroid just 400 meters away — closer than any probe has ever gotten to a space rock. Japan's Hayabusa2 mission set a world record that day, and scientists are buzzing about what it means for protecting Earth from dangerous asteroids someday.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, called JAXA for short, confirmed the milestone this week. Hayabusa2 skimmed past asteroid Torifune at a speed of more than 18,000 kilometers per hour — that's faster than 140 bullet trains going at full speed. The probe came within 400 meters of the asteroid's surface and 744 meters from its center, easily beating scientists' own prediction of about 800 meters.
"The results show that, compared with all the space probes from around the world that have carried out flyby missions, this one passed the closest," said JAXA scientist Yuya Mimasu. The previous record belonged to a Chinese probe that flew within 770 meters of an asteroid's surface.
After the flyby, JAXA released rare photos of Torifune. The asteroid turned out to look like a snowman — two round objects stuck together. Scientists had known Torifune was shaped oddly, but nobody expected that.
This flyby wasn't just about setting records. It was a test run for ways to deflect space rocks that might someday threaten Earth. The mission follows NASA's 2022 experiment, where a spacecraft deliberately crashed into an asteroid called Dimorphos and changed its orbit. JAXA and the European Space Agency are already planning another joint mission to study asteroid Apophis, which will swing close to Earth in April 2029.
Hayabusa2 is something of a veteran explorer. Launched in 2014, it previously landed on asteroid Ryugu — whose name means "dragon palace" in Japanese — located about 300 million kilometers from Earth. It collected precious rock samples and later dropped them off back on our planet. Those samples have helped scientists understand what the solar system was like 4.6 billion years ago, when it was just forming.
Now this workhorse probe has more adventures ahead. In 2031, Hayabusa2 plans to attempt what scientists call a "rendezvous" with asteroid 1998 KY26 — a maneuver where the spacecraft flies alongside or gently touches down on a space rock to gather detailed data.
For the team behind the mission, the Torifune flyby proved their technology works. "The results show that, compared with all the space probes from around the world that have carried out flyby missions, this one passed the closest," Mimasu told reporters. And that precision could one day help humanity nudge a dangerous asteroid safely away from our home planet.