Asteroid landing LIVE stream: Watch Japanese Hayabusa-2 touch down on Asteroid Ryugu NOW

The Japanese space probe is expected to make contact with Asteroid Ryugu later tonight after final approach manoeuvres started at 9.45pm GMT. The incredible endeavour, organised by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is streaming the mission online. You can watch the asteroid landing online here on Express.co.uk courtesy of JAXA, via the embedded YouTube video below. Hayabusa’s asteroid landing comes after the Japanese spacecraft first encountered Ryugu in June last year.

The space agency teased on Twitter: “Touchdown #haya2_TD is planned for Feb 22 ~8am JST! We will have a live web broadcast from the control room.”

Tonight, the space probe will approach a pre-selected landing spot on Ryugu sometime around 11pm GMT.

At 9.14pm GMT today, JAXA confirmed the space probe has begun its descent to the asteroid on its automatic systems.

Then at 9.57 GMT, the space agency confirmed the spacecraft was only 820ft (250m) over the asteroid.

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At 10.05pm GMT, Habauysa’s altitude was recorded at 656.2ft (200m) above Ryugu.

Before the mission was given the green light to go earlier today, Hayabusa-2 hovered over the space rock at a distance of about 12.5 miles (20km).

The spacecraft then spent the next few hours, gradually approaching and accelerating towards Ryugu.

Unfortunately, once the probe lands on Ryugu, Hayabusa’s position will make it impossible to beam images back to JAXA on Earth.

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However, in the run-up to the landing, JAXA received a number of incredible photos of asteroid Ryugu slowly coming into sight.

Because of the breathtaking distance between the spacecraft and the Earth, it took a whole 19 minutes for the photos to reach our home planet.

Once Hayabusa touches down on Ryugu, it will fire bullets into the asteroid to dislodge bits and pieces of surface space rock.

The asteroid debris will be sucked up back into Hayabusa for return to Earth.

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If Hayabusa successfully collects the space rock samples, the spacecraft will head back out into orbit around the asteroid.

This orbital “home position” sits roughly 12.5 miles (20km) above the asteroid.

Touch down operations were initially scheduled to take place in October last year, but Ryugu’s gravel-covered surface came as a surprise to JAXA.

The space agency was instead forced to find a better landing spot for Hayabusa’s suction tool. 

Hayabusa-2 will continue to work on the asteroid before the time comes to return to Earth.

JAXA expects its groundbreaking spacecraft to head back to Earth at some point by the end of the year.

The asteroid samples will not be picked up on Earth at least until 2020.

Earlier in September last year, JAXA successfully landed two miniature rovers on the surface of Asteroid Ryugu.

The probes dubbed ROVER-1A and ROVER-1B were special due to their unusual hop-like movement around the space rock.

The small biscuit-tin-shaped asteroid rovers only measure about seven by 2.8 inches (18cm by 7cm) and weight no more than one kilogram.

source: express.co.uk