Another Success for Hayabusa 2 as it Completes a Flyby of Asteroid Torifune

JAXA's Hayabusa 2 has completed its flyby of asteroid Torifune. The spacecraft came within about 800 meters of the asteroid's surface. Though the spacecraft is travelling very rapidly, making navigation challenging, it was still able to capture clear images of the asteroid's boulder-strewn surface. Based on ground-based observations, scientists suspected that Torifune was a contact binary asteroid, and these images confirm it. Hayabusa 2's primary mission is well in the past, now. JAXA's asteroid sampling spacecraft rendezvoused with asteroid Ryugu back in June 2018. It studied the asteroid for 1.5 years and gathered a sample which was returned to Earth in December 2020. A... [3344 chars]