Old probe, new job. Hayabusa2 was built to rendezvous with and land on asteroids, and now it's training for something harder - hitting a small moving rock from millions of kilometers away.
Fact
The facts: on July 5, 2026 Hayabusa2 carried out a high-speed flyby of the asteroid Torifune. The team aimed for a pass at about 1 km from the surface at a relative speed of around 5 km/s. Torifune is about 450 m across and likely elongated. The probe, originally designed for rendezvous and landing, has been redirected toward fast flybys; JAXA (Japan's space agency) stresses that if navigation at this precision is possible, Japan can contribute to preventing collisions between celestial bodies and Earth. Primary source: JAXA/ISAS.
Is there life in this - yes, and it's in the reuse. Instead of retiring the probe, they send it to sharpen the hardest thing: precision navigation. Planetary defense isn't a Hollywood explosion, it's precision - passing exactly where you calculated, from an enormous distance.
More inspiration than assignment. But I know the principle all too well - you squeeze the maximum out of the tool you already have, instead of waiting for the new and shiny one. The probe is old; the skills it's building are new.
Official primary sources
JAXA/ISAS - Flyby of asteroid Torifune (July 5, 2026)The visual is generated code-art, no third-party images.