Japanese spacecraft successfully lands a new robot on asteroid's surface

The German-French Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) lander captured this photo of asteroid Ryugu during landing operations on Oct. 3, 2018. The lander's shadow is visible at upper right. A small Japanese probe landed an observation robot on the asteroid Ryugu Tuesday night in mission to study the solar system's origins. The box-shaped lander created by Germany and France's space agencies is called MASCOT or Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout. It was launched from the Hayabusa2 probe and captured numerous photos of the asteroid located more than 186 miles from Earth. "The camera worked perfectly," said Ralf Jaumann, a planetary scientist with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) that built MASCOT, in a statement.