Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale

This critical operation, performed on February 22, 2019, constituted the most complex and risky part of the ISAS/JAXA Japanese mission: it required to bring the entire spacecraft in contact with the surface of Ryugu, entirely covered with boulders of all sizes. Its success demonstrates and translates an extraordinary and unique control of space operations by ISAS/JAXA engineers. A second sample collection could be performed in a few months, prior to the return to Earth: Hayabusa2 should leave Ryugu in December 2019, to land on Earth a year later. Our laboratories should thus get in 2021 samples collected at the very surface of one of the most ancient solar system objects, rich in particular of organics which might have played a major role in the evolution towards life on Earth.

Star-forming regions interact with their environment in massive galaxies
An international team of astronomers just witnessed how the sites of the most intense star formation in the early Universe communicate with their surroundings through rapid gas exchange. Their findings offer unprecedented insights into the most rapid evolutionary phase of massive galaxies, about 11 billion years ago.

The launch of the BepiColombo spacecraft (ESA/JAXA) took place on October 19, 2018 at 10:45 pm from the Ariane 5 site in Kourou. BepiColombo has successfully started  its long journey to the planet Mercury, with onboard SIMBIO-SYS, a complex of 3 instruments that will map the surface of the planet with unprecedented spatial resolution and spatial coverage. IAS is co-PI of this instrument through the supply of the main electronics and the implementation of the calibration of the integrated instrument.