Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft is approaching the asteroid Ryugu and should arrive this week.
Asteroid Ryugu is shaped like a spinning top and has a dimpled and rock-strewn surface. Hayabusa2 took this image early Sunday from about 25 miles away.
Hayabusa2 has spent three and a half years matching speed and direction with Ryugu, an asteroid thought to contain water ice and other materials from the early solar system.
A series of images taken while Hayabusa2 was approaching Ryugu shows a bright protrusion near the asteroid’s north pole.
Ryugu is about half a mile wide. A prominent ridge along its equator gives it a squarish shape that has been compared to a diamond or an abacus bead.
A day on Ryugu is about seven and a half hours long, but the asteroid spins backwards, in the opposite direction of Earth and the sun.
The spacecraft’s star tracker took this composite image of Ryugu ( リュウグウ) moving across the constellation Pisces on May 11-14.
