Excerpt from 
thespacereporter.com


The Hayabusa 2, a robotic Japanese spacecraft is due to launch on Monday in Japan from the Tanegashima Space Center. The take-off was originally set for Saturday, but because of unfavorable elements it was not able to launch. Fortunately, on Monday, the launch of Hayabusa 2 will continue and in mid-2018 it will reach its destination, Asteroid 1999 JU3.

Asteroid 1999 JU3 is 3,000 foot in circumference and circles the sun on an orbit that crosses through Earth’s. In past research, the belief that organic matter existed on JU3 was brought up by NASA, the U.S. Air Force and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Carbon, amino acids and water-rich minerals were all believed to be located on the asteroid, which might help to provide fundamental evidence on evolution and where oceans were first created on Earth.

Due to the substantial evidence brought back in the original Hayabusa mission, JAXA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency have partnered with planetary scientist Paul Abell from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. They are to carry out the Hayabusa 2 mission on Monday in hopes that the H-2A rocket will bring back evidence of organic material on Asteroid 1999 JU3.

With the right samples and evidence, they may be able to prove the correlation between asteroids, how the solar system formed, and how life started on Earth. This could greatly impact the theories of evolution and the solar system. The Hayabusa 2 mission for organic matter on the JU3 is important for furthering scientific study.