Japan’s veteran Hayabusa2 spacecraft is fighting for its deep-space survival after its final operational ion engine suffered a critical breakdown. Having successfully dropped off pristine samples from asteroid Ryugu in the Australian outback back in December 2020, the probe embarked on an ambitious extended journey toward a much smaller target, asteroid 1998 KY26. Operating well past its original design life, the mission now faces a race against time ahead of a planned rendezvous in 2031.
The spacecraft relies on a suite of four microwave discharge xenon ion engines, labeled A through D, to navigate the vacuum of deep space. Over the course of the arduous trek to Ryugu and back, engines A, C, and D experienced severe degradation or outright failure. Mission planners had prudently preserved Engine B for this secondary phase of the flight. However, telemetry indicated that Engine B broke down in mid-August, leaving the probe seemingly dead in the water when its ion source failed while the neutralizer remained intact.
Faced with a stranded multi-million-dollar probe, engineers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency devised an unconventional workaround. Because the ion sources in older units like Engine D remain functional despite losing their own neutralizers, ground control will attempt to cross-wire the surviving components. Technicians plan to pair the healthy neutralizer from Engine B with the intact ion source of Engine D, a hybridization technique successfully tested during the original Hayabusa mission to asteroid Itokawa.
If the delicate circuit rewiring goes according to plan, JAXA aims to test-fire the hybrid propulsion system as early as late October. While overall spacecraft degradation still poses a serious threat to the 2031 arrival date, this historical playbook offers a lifeline to keep the historic asteroid explorer moving forward.
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