# Hayabusa2

*Spacecraft*

Landed on the asteroid Ryugu, fired a copper impactor into it to expose material the sunlight had never touched, and dropped a capsule of the samples into the Australian desert in December 2020. The spacecraft itself never stopped: it kept its remaining fuel and is on an extended cruise to another asteroid in the 2030s.

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Agency | JAXA |
| Launched | 2014-12-03 - still working |
| From the Sun | 146,196,395 km (+362,288 km/d) |
| From the Earth | 64,589,631 km (+45,261 km/d) |
| A signal takes | 4 min |
| Travelling at | 29.1 km/s |

Distances and speed are computed from JPL Horizons trajectories and are true of 2026-09-05, changing at the rate given beside each. The interpolation itself is good to a few kilometres; what ages these figures is the date, not the arithmetic.

## Path

A loop round the Sun on an extended mission: the samples are home and the spacecraft is not. Small burns and Earth flybys are aiming it at the fast-spinning asteroid 1998 KY26 in 2031.

## Along the way

- 2015-12-03 — Earth flyby
- 2018-06-27 — Arrived at Ryugu
- 2019-02-21 — First touchdown, and a sample taken
- 2019-04-05 — Fired an impactor to open a fresh crater
- 2019-11-13 — Left Ryugu for home
- 2020-12-05 — Dropped the samples over Australia and flew on

## Elsewhere

- On the live map: https://www.orbitalmap.space/?world=solar-system&focus=hayabusa-2
- The mission's own page: https://www.hayabusa2.jaxa.jp/en/
- This object as a page: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/hayabusa-2/
- Every object: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/
- What this site is and what it reads: https://www.orbitalmap.space/llms.txt