Image credit: JAXA

Have you ever wondered what it would look like on the surface of an asteroid? Perhaps you watched a science fiction movie and wondered how close the screen play came to reality. Well, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) just returned a video from the surface of the asteroid, Ryugu, showing us in detail what the surface of a large asteroid looks like in our solar system. The video was taken by one of the two Minerva-II1B rovers delivered there as part of the Hayabusa2 space mission, which intends to return not just images and videos of the surface, but also samples so that scientists can study the composition of the asteroid here on Earth. More details on the Hayabusa2 mission, including information on how the two deployed Minerva rovers hop around the surface, can be found on JAXA’s Hayabusa2 website. In the words of JAXA’s official twitter release, please “enjoy ‘standing’ on the surface of an asteroid!”

For more information, visit: http://global.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/hayabusa2/