JAXA

Data collected by Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft during its historic touchdown on asteroid Ryugu has revealed surprising characteristics of the ancient space rock, including signs of a close encounter with the Sun.

ESA has released "sonifications" of the telemetry sent back by the BepiColombo Mercury probe during its April 20, 2020 flyby of Earth. The five audio recordings were captured by two instruments installed on one of the two linked orbiters.

An international team of scientists led by Takeshi Horinouchi of Hokkaido University suggests that a atmospheric equivalent of tidal waves may be responsible for the super-rotation of the atmosphere of Venus, which acts as a giant heat engine.

The BepiColombo deep-space probe has successfully made its flyby of Earth on its journey to explore the planet Mercury. On April 10, the joint ESA/JAXA mission passed within 12,700 km of the Earth's surface as it carried out a slingshot maneuver.

This week Earth will be visited by a spacecraft that has traveled 1.4 billion km to get here. But no, it’s not aliens – it’s BepiColombo, just slingshotting around our planet for a gravitational speed boost on its roundabout journey to Mercury.

Japan is moving ahead with a first-of-a-kind mission to explore the two moons of the Mars system. All going to plan, the Martian Moon Exploration mission will return to Earth with the first ever samples of a Martian moon by the end of the decade.

The Guinness Book of World Records has awarded JAXA the record for the lowest altitude by an Earth observation satellite. During its mission from 2017 to 2019, the Super Low Altitude Test Satellite reached a suitably super-low altitude of 167.4 km.

The Japanese space agency, JAXA, will set up a studio on the International Space Station (ISS) that will provide two-way live-streaming video feeds starting in 2020 as part of the JAXA Space Innovation through Partnership and Co-Creation initiative.

JAXA's Hayabusa2 asteroid explorer is on its way home to Earth. The unmanned deep-space probe today fired its chemical thrusters to push it away from the asteroid Ryugu at a relative velocity of 9.2 cm/s (3.6 in/s), with the successful burn confirmed by mission control shortly after.

The Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has sent a third and final rover toward asteroid Ryugu, as mission control begins to think about bringing the probe and its precious samples home.

​​The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has released a video showing the climactic moments of the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft’s second descent to the surface of asteroid Ryugu, which took place on July 11, 2019.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has confirmed that, earlier this month, its Hayabusa2 deep space probe became the first spacecraft to successfully bomb an asteroid.