The suspense is over: Two tiny hopping robots have successfully landed on an asteroid called Ryugu — and they've even sent back some wild postcards from their new home. The first images from the astronomical object flying at some 300 million kilometers from the Earth were received by Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) immediately after the MINERVA-II1 rovers touched down on the asteroid on Friday. (Image credit: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)

The agency still has two more deployments yet to accomplish before it can rest easy: Hayabusa2 is scheduled to deploy a larger rover called MASCOT in October and another tiny hopper next year. Weighing some 0.6 metric tons, the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft was launched on December 3, 2014 by JAXA on mission to explore asteroid Ryugu, retrieve materials from it and bring them to Earth.
The Japanese space agency JAXA announces that a pair of 18-centimetre (7.1 in) tall robots successfully landed on asteroid Ryugu.