American Mitchie Brusco is leaving his mark in skateboarding, successfully executing the first ever 1260, three-and-a-half full revolutions, in the sport at the X Games.

American @Mitchiebrusco84 just landed the first 1260 in skateboard history at #XGames! pic.twitter.com/aHpeT3mGYq — X Games (@XGames) August 3, 2019

After Brusco landed the 1260 the crowd and the commentators went wild to celebrate the historic display. One broadcaster reacts saying, "What is going on?!" The 22-year-old on the other hand looks calm, cool and collected after completing the daunting trick.

"Mitchie Brusco goes where no person has gone before," one announcer exclaims, noting the significance of the performance they just saw.

Afterwards Brusco, wearing his newest medal, discusses what the experience was like was and how he feels now. He says on his approach, "I don't know it just kinda worked." He also noted that he was still trying to process the whole thing.

Unbelievable. Mitchie Brusco (@Mitchiebrusco84) wrote his name in the skateboarding record books forever today when he became the first ever to successfully land a 1260. How does he feel? He’s...still processing. #XGames pic.twitter.com/1dojsOXe5P — Michelle Bruton (@MichelleBruton) August 3, 2019

When you make history icons notice, and that's what happened with the young skateboarder who had skateboarding icon Tony Hawk congratulating him on Twitter. Hawk said the accomplishment left him "speechless."

Brusco is no stranger to causing a crowd reaction and has been making his mark on the sport for years. In 2011 he became the third skateboarder to land a 900 in a Big Air contest and in 2013 he became the second in history to land a 1080 successfully on the MegaRamp. </s> - The first light of day shows Hurricane Irma has undergone some changes overnight. First off, sustained winds are down to 150 mph. Secondly, Irma is completing an eyewall replacement cycle and the eye continues to widen.

The diameter of the eye now is about 45 miles, which is good. Generally speaking, when the eye expands, the storm weakens while the wind field increases.

Think of a figure skater who is spinning. When she pulls her arms in, closer to her body, she spins much faster. When the skater extends her arms away from her body, the spin slows. It’s the same thing with a hurricane: When the eye expands, the storm spins slower.

The track of Irma is going to be very close to, if not on, the coast of Cuba. The storm’s interaction with land will more than likely weaken the storm further. I will be looking for intensity changes very closely.

The track forecast has not changed much. Nearly all the models are forecasting a storm running up the middle of Florida and the official forecast from the Hurricane Center follows along.

We have all seen the incredible photos of the damage in the Caribbean from Irma. Remember, that is Category 5 damage. The storm is not going to be a Category 5 when it is over Central Florida. Also not a Category 4, probably not a Category 3. More than likely a Category 2.

While that is certainly no picnic, the trend towards a weaker hurricane is good.

We will all get through this. Just do what you are doing. Finish up your preparations and do not stress. </s> Esperance and Wydad Casablanca will face off on Friday night in the second leg of the Caf Champions League final at the Stade Olympique de Rades.

The sides shared the spoils in last week’s 1-1 draw at the Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium in Rabat, after a feisty game which saw eight yellow cards dished out, one red card brandished and VAR controversy which generated lots of column inches.

Fousseny Coulibaly opened the scoring for the Tunisians just before half-time, before the goal was cancelled out by a Cheick Comara header in the 80th minute.

Esperance have remained unbeaten throughout the competition and are looking to win the tournament in consecutive seasons.

Moine Chaabani’s team have played 11 games in this year’s competition, winning seven and drawing four, as they seek to maintain their unblemished record and become the first club to repeat the feat of going unbeaten throughout the competition.

In 1994, the Tunisians didn’t lose a game on the road to an African crown, and while four other clubs - Oryx Douala (1965), Ismaily (1969), JET (now JS Kabylie) in 1981 and Al Ahly (2005) – have accomplished this feat once, none have ever repeated the achievement.

The Beast of Africa’s strength in Rades is evidenced by the fact they’ve won five games on the spin on home turf, scoring 10 times and conceding just once, against CS Constantine, in the quarter-finals.

However, Chabaani was disappointed after his side couldn’t press home their advantage in Morocco after Wydad captain Brahim Nakach was sent off in the 49th minute.

“We could have achieved a better result today. We were successful in the first half, but we failed in the second as we couldn't defend our 1-0 advantage,” Chaabani began.

“The winner is not yet decided. We are facing off a great team, having enough experience and a great coach. There is still another game for which we have to prepare well.”

Esperance are aspiring to be the fourth club to retain the continental competition in its entire history, a success only attained by Enyimba, Al Ahly and Tout Puissant Mazembe.

In an interview with Caf, Saad Bguir, the Tunisians’ hero with a brace when they roared back from a 3-1 loss against Al Ahly in Alexandria to win 3-0 in Rades, is relishing the prospect of winning the competition yet again.

“It will be an incredible feeling to win the Caf Champions League two years in a row,” Bguir affirmed.

“It would be an honour for me as a player and a great joy especially this year, which marks the club’s centenary of existence. In addition, it would be the ultimate gift to our fans who always had our backs and who, I’m certain, will fill the stadium Friday and make the night memorable.”

For Wydad, last week’s 1-1 draw was a relief in the end, given they were a goal down at half-time, reduced to ten men after Nakach saw red five minutes after the restart, and battled through questionable calls by the referee – Gehad Grisha, who has since been suspended – before finding an equaliser.

The 2017 champions are searching for their second title in three years, but will have to find ways to breach an Esperance defence which let in only one goal at the Stade Olympique de Rades.

Faouzi Benzarti’s charges, however, have had an atrocious time on their travels throughout the competition, winning on one occasion 1-0 against Lobi Stars, before failing to win in five other away trips.

Of the five games, three have been defeats while the other games have been goalless draws. The Moroccans have failed to score in their last three games on the road, and against a side with a watertight defence, as well as an away goal, Benzarti’s crew know they must score in Tunisia.

In the history of the Africa’s premier club competition, Wydad are the seventh side to play out to a stalemate at home in the first-leg of the final, so this isn’t a new experience for a finalist going away from home.

On the seven occasions, the away side managed to get a result in the reverse fixture thrice, while it’s gone the home side’s way four times.

Ironically, the last away side to secure the continental crown after drawing the first-leg at home was Wydad in 2017, when they drew 1-1 in Morocco against Al Ahly, before picking up a colossal 1-0 success in Egypt.

Another good omen for the Casablanca-based club is the fact Esperance, in 2012, failed to take advantage of a 1-1 draw against Al Ahly in Egypt, before going on to lose 2-1 in front of their fans.

Benzarti lauded Wydad’s spirit after last week’s draw, which helped them retain their good home record and also give them a realistic chance in the final.

"We had to make a huge effort to come back and score in the game. I would like to thank my players for the level they have shown despite having a player sent off,” Benzarti said.

The experienced manager will need another superhuman effort by his side if they’re to claim a second Caf CL title in three seasons. </s> Great Britain has 17 athletes competing at the 2018 Winter Paralympics

Winter Paralympics on the BBC Venue: Pyeongchang, South Korea Dates: 9-18 March Time in Pyeongchang: GMT +9 Coverage: Follow on Radio 5 live and via the BBC Sport website. Television coverage on Channel 4.

The largest ever Winter Paralympics were officially opened in freezing conditions at the Olympic Stadium in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Forty-eight different nations, plus a neutral Paralympic athletes team consisting of Russian competitors, entered the stadium in -5C temperatures.

A record 567 athletes will take part across nine days of competition.

Snowboarder Owen Pick led the British team into the arena as flagbearer.

ParalympicsGB has sent a 17-strong team of athletes, though only snowboarders Pick, Ben Moore and James Barnes-Miller, and 2014 gold-medal-winning visually impaired skier Kelly Gallagher and her guide Gary Smith attended the ceremony. The remaining athletes compete on Saturday.

The $106m 35,000-seater stadium, which will be pulled down after the closing ceremony, appeared to be about two thirds full, and the crowd watched a ceremony consisting of traditional Korean dance, combined with modern music and blended with light shows.

Media playback is not supported on this device Eight years ago I was fighting for this flag - Pick

Large North Korean party enters

Unlike at last month's Olympics, where North and South Korean athletes walked under one united flag, the two countries could not strike a similar arrangement for the Paralympics opening ceremony.

Instead, a North Korean party of 18 representatives walked with their own flag to mark their first appearance at a Winter Paralympics, although there are only two athletes competing - both in cross-country skiing - with the rest of the group made up of officials.

There was no notable reaction for the North Korean entrance from the crowd, who were polite but subdued for most of the evening. The loudest moment came when the South Korean athletes entered the arena to complete the athlete parade.

There was also a positive reaction when one athlete from North Korea and one from South Korea held the Paralympic flame aloft together before handing it over to start a relay which culminated with a South Korean single-leg amputee abseiling up a ski slope before the cauldron was lit.

North Korea and South Korea appeared under their own countries' flags at the parade. North Korea's flag bearer is ice hockey player Hwang Chung-gum

There was barely a reaction when the Russian athletes entered the arena under a neutral flag and the team name neutral Paralympic athletes, after the nation was banned following a report which found evidence of state-sponsored doping.

The USA has the largest contingent of athletes the Games, with 68, and were also greeted with a loud cheer.

The British team were depleted by the number of athletes involved in competition on Saturday, but World Championship silver medallist Pick, a former soldier who had his leg amputated after being injured in Afghanistan, led from the front.

He was ably supported by the energetic dancing and bouncing of Gallagher, who in Sochi four years ago became the first Briton to win a gold medal on snow at either a Paralympics or Olympics.

Host nation South Korea have 36 athletes competing

K-pop and skateboards

The ceremony itself, after the athlete parade, was sprayed with flashes of colour and featured a young girl directing illuminated fish as they swam in the arena floor, joyful children on sledges and boats, giant snowmen and a skateboarding mascot.

One of the most memorable moments featured a DJ on a large wooden wheel lifted into the air to the sound of K-pop, the modern genre of pop music famous in Korea.

International Paralympic Committee president Andrew Parsons impressed the crowd by greeting them in Korean at the start of his speech, adding "Paralympic sport not only changes lives but changes the world".

Competition at the 2018 Winter Paralympics will start on Saturday

He was followed by South Korea president Moon Jae-in, who officially opened the Games to a backdrop of fireworks and introduced the raising of the Paralympic flag.

After the flame was lit, there was a further rendition of K-pop songs that got the crowd dancing and singing to end the ceremony.

The Paralympic cauldron was lit by Seo Soonseok of South Korea's men's wheelchair curling team, who had been handed the flame by silver medal-winning women's curling team member Kim EunJung.

What is happening on Saturday?

The sport will begin on Saturday with downhill skiing, biathlon, wheelchair curling and Para-ice hockey, with 36 medals on offer.

GB's visually impaired duo of Mille Knight and Menna Fitzpatrick, along with their guides Brett Wild and Jen Kehoe, will hope to be among the downhill medals, while Chris Lloyd and James Whitley will race in the men's event.

Elsewhere for Britain, Scott Meenagh will compete in the 7.5km biathlon and GB's wheelchair curlers start their campaign against Norway. </s> Ski instructor and skateboarder Dennis Baltimore, 35, formerly of Hermosa Beach, died Sunday, December 11, in a skiing accident shortly after completing a ski instructor training session at the Northstar California ski resort, north of Lake Tahoe. He was skiing down a beginner’s slope on his way to his locker when a snowboarder lost control and ran into him, Baltimore’s girlfriend Jillian Torrez told the “Reno Gazette Journal.”

In effort to avoid the snowboarder, Baltimore veered off the course and into a creek, hitting a rock, Placer County Sheriff Sgt. Mike Hunt told the “Gazette.”

Baltimore worked as a ski instructor at Northstar and a Ropes Course instructor at Heavenly Ski Resort. He moved from Hermosa Beach to the Tahoe area five years ago and was living in Incline Village, Nevada with Torrez and their six month old daughter Zoe.

“When he lived in Hermosa, he was a pro level skateboarder who was a regular at the Hermosa skatepark, where he helped all of us learn to skate” Hermosa resident James Ryan said.

Baltimore was born in Tarzana, the only son of Mary Baltimore and Dale Carley. He leaves behind his daughter Zoe, his girlfriend Jillian, his mother Mary, and his father Dale. He also leaves behind a brotherhood of friends in both the South Bay and Lake Tahoe areas.

A paddleout and scattering of his ashes will be held in Hermosa on a date to be announced. Funeral services will be held at Cornerstone Community Church of Incline Village on a date also to be announced. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to a fund for his daughter at GoFundMe.com. ER

comments so far. Comments posted to EasyReaderNews.com may be reprinted in the Easy Reader print edition, which is published each Thursday. </s> CHICO — The skateboard park inside Humboldt Neighborhood Park has been reopened.

The course was closed by the Chico Area Recreation and Park District last week after users continued to violate the rules.

CARD Facilities Manager Jake Preston said CARD reopened the park Tuesday, but will continue to monitor it closely. Leading to the closure were the violations of rules about alcohol and drug use at the park, as well as bikes. Only skateboards are allowed to be used on the course.

The course is on Humboldt Avenue, near Wall Street. </s> On Jan. 4, an exquisitely sensitive instrument on Earth detected a disturbance that rippled through space and time. Scientists traced the ripple 3 billion light-years away, back to two ancient black holes on a collision course. This marked the third time in about a year that physicists, thanks to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO, discovered gravitational waves from the violent death spirals of merging black holes.

The first gravitational wave discovery was announced in February 2016 and the second a few months later. The black holes identified in January were slightly smaller than those in the first detection, but they were much farther away, according to David Shoemaker, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and spokesman for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, an international group involving more than a thousand researchers. They reported the details of the new binary black hole system that generated the wave Thursday in the journal Physical Review Letters.

“Gravitational waves are distortions in the metric of space that we live in,” Michael Landry, a LIGO physicist at California Institute of Technology, said during a news conference Wednesday. He used a metaphor of a painting's canvas to describe distorted space. If you grip the top and bottom of the canvas and pull, the picture warps, expanding on one axis while contracting on the other.

Two L-shaped LIGO detectors, one in Washington state and the other in Louisiana, check for these distortions. They shoot synchronized laser beams down perpendicular vacuum tubes, each 2½ miles long. As a gravitational wave passes by, one arm of the L will shrink or expand, throwing the beams out of alignment. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology spearhead the project, with support from the National Science Foundation and scientific agencies from a host of other countries.

“This is exactly what we hoped for from NSF's investment in LIGO: taking us deeper into time and space in ways we couldn't do before the detection of gravitational waves,” NSF director France Córdova said in a statement.

The signal in January failed to set off the usual automated alarm — the LIGO scientists had just restarted the detector, after a short winter break, and hadn't yet properly calibrated the trigger setting at the Washington site. A researcher in Germany, who happened to be poring over the LIGO data, first spotted the wave. (The wave would have been caught eventually, the LIGO team said; in a worst-case scenario there's an offline backup to review.)

The scientists named it GW170104. The wave hit Washington about 3 milliseconds before Louisiana. Given the data captured, the LIGO team calculated that the chance an event like this would be a false alarm would occur once every 70,000 years.

“The key thing to take away is we’re looking for novelty,” Shoemaker said during Wednesday's briefing. On these terms, the new black holes complied, at least a little bit.

Both of these black holes were much more massive than our sun. One was roughly 30 times solar mass, and the other 20 times the sun's mass, putting these black holes in the intermediate range between the first detection (two larger black holes) and second (two smaller black holes).

During this hole-on-hole merger, the equivalent of two solar masses were converted into gravitational waves. “These are the most powerful astronomical events witnessed by human beings,” Landry said.

The new detection also offered hints about the ways black holes spin with respect to their orbits. Georgia Tech astrophysicist Laura Cadonati on Wednesday likened the spinning black holes to a pair of tornadoes that dance around each other. Black holes can spin counterclockwise and clockwise, like tornadoes, but can also tilt at angles tornadoes could never achieve.

“We opened a new window into the universe,” Cadonati said. “Before our discoveries we didn't even know for sure that these black holes existed.”

It is possible that one of the black holes had a misaligned spin, which is to say that it was not spinning in the same direction as its overall spiral orbit. “We have an indication that at least one of the two spins is not aligned with the orbital angular momentum,” said B.S. Sathyaprakash, a cosmologist at Pennsylvania State University, during Wednesday's conference.

If the two black holes are not spinning in the same way, that hints at the way they met. Broadly speaking, there are two ways that binary black hole systems form: They began as an isolated pair of stars (think the dual Tatooine sunset in “Star Wars”) that collapsed, or the black holes collapsed independently in a dense star cluster. Cadonati said “this finding lightly favors the theory” of a cluster of stars.

And once again, Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity held up. Einstein's theory indicates that gravitational waves do not disperse through a physical medium, unlike light through a prism.

“Even for this new event, which is about two times farther away than our first two detections, we could not find any evidence that gravitational waves disperse as they travel in the fabric of space-time,” Alessandra Buonanno, a University of Maryland physics professor and LIGO collaborator, said in a statement.

The LIGO team continues to increase the detectors' sensitivity. In Louisiana, workers recently entered the vacuum envelope, clad in sterile bunny suits, to patch up areas where light could scatter in the tubes, cutting down on noise at low frequencies. In Washington, the observatory beefed up its laser to reduce high-frequency noise. With every improvement in clarity, LIGO can push its reach deeper into space.

The two teams will swap notes to improve their systems' range for the next run, scheduled to start in 2018. Italy's Virgo detector, too, is close to completion, which will join in LIGO's hunt for gravitational waves. It is possible, members of the LIGO team said during Wednesday's conference, that future discoveries could include merging neutron stars — collisions between the dense remnants of spent stars, the size of a city with the mass of a sun.

A brief history of gravity, gravitational waves and LIGO

A year later, scientists keep listening to gravitational waves, the soundtrack of the cosmos

For the second time ever, scientists detected gravitational waves from colliding black holes </s> I’m marching for science today because I’m mad. Yes, I’m a mad scientist. I became a scientist because I wanted to help people. In my career I’ve researched gene therapy, how to engineer new antibiotics and how to make better cancer drugs. But now what I do and care about has come under attack. I’m mad at politicians for hijacking science for their own selfish interests.

I know that many people just love debating whether science should be political or not. But personally I’m not really too interested in spinning my wheels in this pyrrhic war. Science has always been political ever since we first used it to show that the Earth orbits the sun. And right now, we haven’t any time to waste.

The real question is who does science serve? When politicians are left alone to attack science with impunity, the answer is that science serves only the most elite, and is obstructed from helping all of us. As a result, real people get hurt, particularly our most vulnerable and marginalized communities. Look at lead poisoning in Flint. Or Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy. Or the Dakota Access pipeline. Or the rising seas of Tuvalu. Or the Ebola outbreak in west Africa. Or the measles outbreak in Europe.

I’m marching because science needs to take a stand and fight for justice with the communities who are harmed by bad science policy.

And while we’re here marching, we scientists need to recognize that we are extremely late – science has been under attack for a long time, not just in 2017. Our scientific community has been sitting on the sidelines watching in horror, afraid to get involved and be called biased. This strategy of ceding the floor has failed us terribly, as those with private political interests have gone ahead and polarized scientific issues anyway.

I’m marching because democracy is not a spectator sport. Not even for scientists.

Young people get this. Many of my young scientist friends are reacting to the assault on science by leaving the lab to work in communications, policy and advocacy. And they’re organizing the March for Science. Our generation is standing up right now because we are the ones who will suffer the most from bad science policy decisions.

It’s our cities that will be wrecked by climate change, it’s our bodies that will suffer from the dismantling of public health, it’s our jobs that will be lost to automation. We’re leading the fight because our heads are on the chopping block.

It’s also significant that the science justice movement is being led by the people. The march was started by strangers connecting over social media and has bloomed into a global movement, 600 cities and hundreds of thousands of participants strong.

In the past, the institutional structure of science advocacy has created a conservative bystander culture that has failed science abysmally. We need grassroots activists unfettered by protocol, and not content to just do better “outreach”. We need science advocates who can speak truth to power, organize in our communities, and to challenge problematic power structures with action. Scientists in the streets is a sign that politics as usual cannot continue.

And as we march for science, we are also defending the people who do science, because they’re under attack. Scientists are being gagged from speaking about research like climate change online (at the National Park Service and Department of Energy), and being banned from the country because of their background. This is especially troubling given our history of erecting institutional barriers that prevent prevent certain groups from participating in science (see Hidden Figures, Rosalind Franklin, or Henrietta Lacks).

The attacks hit close to home for me because I was born in a refugee camp. I am only a scientist today because I benefited from pro-refugee policies – why doesn’t the future generation have the same chance I did? When scientists face barriers, they can’t do their work in service of the public good, so we all suffer. That’s why the fight to stand up for scientists and science itself are one and the same.



We’ve been speaking to many historians and seasoned scientists, and they all tell us: the March for Science is poised to be the largest science event in history. That’s poignant because, right now, changing history is absolutely what is required.

We need another scientific revolution. The first scientific revolution transformed our understanding of the natural world and changed civilization as we know it, making us healthier, happier and more productive. Today, we have huge scientific challenges ahead such as climate change, genetic engineering and automation. And yet we are stuck with the handbrake on and unable to act effectively as a society, because a few privileged people are blocking progress at the expense of the rest of us.

That’s why we urgently need to transform the relationship between science, politics and society: our collective futures depend on it. That’s why I’m marching, because we need to change history. It’s time to join the revolution.

Lucky Tran is a science communicator based in New York, and holds a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Cambridge. He is also on the steering committee of the March for Science. These words and views are his own. </s> Image copyright Jaxa et al. Image caption Scientists will map Ryugu with a view to choosing the best location to sample

A Japanese spacecraft has arrived at its target - an asteroid shaped like a diamond or, according to some, a spinning top.

Hayabusa 2 has been travelling toward the space rock Ryugu since launching from the Tanegashima spaceport in 2014.

It is on a quest to study the object close-up and deliver rocks and soil from Ryugu to Earth.

It will use explosives to propel a projectile into Ryugu, digging out a fresh sample from beneath the surface.

Dr Makoto Yoshikawa, Hayabusa 2's mission manager, talked about the plan now that the spacecraft had arrived at its destination.

"At first, we will study very carefully the surface features. Then we will select where to touch down. Touchdown means we get the surface material," he told me.

A copper projectile, or "impactor" will separate from the spacecraft, floating down to the surface of the asteroid. Once Hayabusa 2 is safely out of the way, an explosive charge will detonate, driving the projectile into the surface.

"We have an impactor which will create a small crater on the surface of Ryugu. Maybe in spring next year, we will try to make a crater... then our spacecraft will try to reach into the crater to get the subsurface material."

"But this is a very big challenge."

Image copyright JAXA / Akihiro Ikeshita Image caption Hayabusa 2 will use a projectile to excavate fresh material from beneath Ryugu's surface

Why is this story important?

Scientists study asteroids to gain insights into the origins and evolution of our cosmic neighbourhood, the Solar System.

Asteroids are essentially leftover building materials from the formation of the Solar System 4.6 billion years ago.

It's also thought they may contain chemical compounds that could have been important for kick-starting life on Earth.

They contain water, organic (carbon-rich) compounds and precious metals. The last of those has tempted several companies to look into the feasibility of asteroid mining.

'Dumpling' space rock comes into view

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption From far away, the asteroid seemed to resemble a Japanese dango dumpling...

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption ...but now we have close-up images, scientists are comparing its shape to that of a spinning top

Dr Yoshikawa, who is an associate professor at Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), said Ryugu's shape was unexpected.

He said asteroids with this general shape tended to be fast-rotating, completing one revolution every three or four hours. But Ryugu's spin period is relatively long - about 7.5 hours.

"Many scientists in our project think that in the past the spin period was very short - it rotated very quickly - and the spin period has slowed down. We don't know why it slowed down, but this is a very interesting topic," he told BBC News.

Hayabusa 2 will spend about a year and a half surveying the 900m-wide space rock, which is about 290 million km (180 million miles) from Earth.

During this time, it will aim to deploy several landing craft to the surface, including small rovers and a German-built instrument package called Mascot (Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout).

Image copyright DLR Image caption Hayabusa 2 is carrying a German-built lander called MASCOT

Ryugu is a so-called C-type asteroid, a kind that is thought to be relatively primitive. This means it may be rich in organic and hydrated minerals (those combined with water). Studying what Ryugu is made from could provide insights into the molecular mix that contributed to the origin of life on Earth.

The surface of the asteroid is likely to have been weathered - altered by aeons of exposure to the harsh environment of space. That's why Hayabusa 2's scientists want to dig down for as fresh a sample as possible.

The onboard Lidar (light detection and ranging) instrument is used partly as a navigation sensor for rendezvous, approach, and touchdown. It illuminates the target with pulsed laser light to measure variable distances between the two objects. On Tuesday, scientists successfully used the Lidar to measure the distance from Hayabusa to the asteroid for the first time.

The mission will depart from Ryugu in December 2019 with the intention of returning to Earth with the asteroid samples in 2020.

The first Hayabusa spacecraft was launched in 2003 and reached the asteroid Itokawa in 2005.

Despite being hit by a series of mishaps, it returned to Earth in 2010 with a small amount of material from the asteroid.

An American asteroid sample return mission, Osiris-Rex, will rendezvous with the object 101955 Bennu in August.

Follow Paul on Twitter.
Mitchie Brusco becomes the first skateboarder in history to complete a 1260° (3½-revolution aerial spin) in competition.