A Japanese probe flew 400 metres (1,312 feet) from a near-Earth asteroid this month, marking the closest approach ever recorded in such a mission, the space agency has said. The fridge-sized Hayabusa2 skimmed asteroid Torifune on July 5, in a flyby mission that demonstrated the ability to deflect a potentially dangerous space rock away from Earth. Moving at a speed of more than 18,000 kilometres (11,185 miles) per hour, the probe reached 400 metres from the asteroid’s surface and 744 metres from its centre, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said on Thursday. This has beat the agency’s projection of about 800 metres from the centre of Torifune. “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” to an asteroid, JAXA scientist Yuya Mimasu told reporters. The previous record was set by a Chinese probe, which flew within 770 metres of an asteroid’s surface, according to the Nikkei business daily. After the successful flyby, JAXA has released rare images showing the space rock resembled a snowman. The black-and-white image, captured by a telescopic camera, showed what appeared to be two round objects joined together. Torifune was known to have an elongated shape, but its details were unknown. The mission follows NASA’s successful 2022 test that changed the orbit of the asteroid Dimorphos by deliberately smashing it with a spacecraft. JAXA and the European Space Agency have teamed up on another so-called “planetary defence” mission to explore the asteroid Apophis, which will pass close to Earth in April 2029. Launched in 2014, Hayabusa2 has already thrilled scientists by landing on and gathering material from the asteroid Ryugu, some 300 million kilometres (185 million miles) from our planet. Six years later, it returned to Earth precious samples from Ryugu -- “dragon palace” in Japanese -- providing scientists with clues about what the solar system was like at its birth some 4.6 billion years ago. After the Torifune mission, the space probe is expected to attempt in 2031 a “rendezvous” -- a manoeuvre where it flies alongside or touches down on a space rock to gather detailed data -- with an asteroid called 1998KY26.
