Watch live: JAXA’s Hayabusa-2 preparing to touch down on asteroid Ryugu

Feb. 21 (UPI) — The Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa-2 probe is preparing to touch down on asteroid Ryugu and collect a rock sample. The brief rendezvous is scheduled to occur late Thursday afternoon — early Friday morning in Japan.

JAXA will provide a live stream of the event, with coverage beginning at 4:45 p.m. ET. Touchdown is expected around 6:00 p.m. ET.

Early on Thursday, JAXA confirmed in a series of tweets that Hayabusa-2 had slowed its speed and begun to decrease its altitude.

“From here, we are in a slow approach to Ryugu,” Hayabusa-2 tweeted.

The asteroid-circling spacecraft won’t land so much as delicately brush the surface of Ryugu. During the late stages of descent, the probe will fire a tantalum pellet at the asteroid surface. The 650-mile-per-hour collision will create a plume of dust and debris that Hayabusa-2 will attempt to scoop up with an instrument dubbed the Sampler Horn.

“It’s very challenging because it all has to be done autonomously,” Ian Franchi, an astronomer at the Open University in Milton Keynes, told the Guardian. “There is so little gravity, and there are so many boulders on the surface.”

Hayabusa-2 first rendezvoused with Ryugu in June of last year after a 3.5-year journey. Over the last several months, the spacecraft has been circling the asteroid and surveying its surface. Images of the space rock’s surface allowed scientists to select ideal landing locations.

Tonight’s touchdown will be the first of three sample collection attempts. The rock and dust samples will be returned to Earth in 2020.

Astronomers consider Ryugu a potentially hazardous asteroid, as its orbit around the sun brings it rather close to Earth. A collision with an asteroid Ryugu’s size could do considerable damage. Current calculations suggest it could pass within 59,000 miles of Earth.

But scientists are mostly interested in Ryugu because they predict the space rock will provide insights into the solar system’s early evolution.

“Studying Ryugu could tell humanity not only about Ryugu’s surface and interior, but about what materials were available in the early Solar System for the development of life,” according to NASA.

Ryugu samples could help scientists better understand how carbon-rich asteroids like it migrate from distant asteroid belts.

“We believe carbon-rich asteroids may have significant amounts of water locked up in their rocks. It’s possible such asteroids may have brought to Earth both the water and the organic material necessary for life to start,” Alan Fitzsimmons, astronomer at Queen’s University Belfast, told BBC News. “These samples will be crucial in investigating this possibility.”