SPACE ROCKED
Japan’s Hayabusa2 probe fires a BOMB at distant asteroid Ryugu in dramatic footage
Scientists think the asteroid's innards could teach us more about how the Solar System was formed
A BOMB was recently launched towards an asteroid during a Japanese space mission and scientists have now released breathtaking footage of the spectacle.
The small explosive was said to blow a crater the size of a double-decker bus into the space rock known as Ryugu.
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Scientists want to look inside Ryugu because they think the asteroid formed in the early solar system and its innards could potentially tell us more about how our star system was formed.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) sent a spacecraft called Hayabusa2 to study Ryugu and its surface.
Hayabusa2 had the tricky mission of dropping the bomb on the asteroid and then immediately darting away to avoid flying debris from the blast.
However, the spacecraft hovered 1,640 feet above the asteroid to drop the explosive and was able to capture some images at 2 second intervals just after the bomb was dropped, which make up the video that was recently posted on Hayabusa2's account.
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The spacecraft has been studying the asteroid since June 2018 and has already released a small number of hopping rovers onto the surface.
It also landed on Ryugu itself to collect a sample of the asteroid's rock.
The explosion to create the crater happened on April 4 this year.
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JAXA hasn't yet released any images of the crater but has confirmed that the bomb definitely impacted on Ryugu's surface.
Once the scientists have images of the crater they can use them to study the inside of the rock as the explosion should have removed some of the asteroids surface to reveal pristine rock below that hasn't been affected by the harsh conditions of space.
One final small rover is also going to be released on Ryugu's surface before Hayabusa2 packs up and heads back to Earth with its precious asteroid samples at the end of the year.
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