JAXA's Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has successfully completed a flyby of asteroid Torifune, coming within approximately 800 meters of its surface. The maneuver was executed despite the probe's high velocity, which made navigation particularly difficult.
The flyby yielded clear images of a boulder-strewn surface, confirming ground-based suspicions that Torifune is a contact binary asteroid — two smaller bodies fused together by gravity. This marks another technical achievement for the extended mission of a spacecraft that previously returned samples from asteroid Ryugu.
Hayabusa 2 launched in 2014, rendezvoused with Ryugu in 2018, and delivered its sample capsule to Earth in 2020. After that primary mission concluded, JAXA approved an extended phase targeting multiple asteroids, including Torifune.
The confirmation of Torifune's contact binary nature bolsters scientific understanding of how such systems form and evolve. It also demonstrates the continued operational capability of a spacecraft now more than a decade into its journey.
However, the mission's extended timeline carries inherent risk, as the aging probe faces potential hardware degradation that could limit future scientific returns. JAXA will assess the spacecraft's health before planning subsequent targets.