Japan becomes world's first to land rovers MINERVA-II1 on asteroid Ryugu

Two robotic rovers have become world's first to successfully land on the surface of an asteroid, the Japanese space agency JAXA said, sharing images captured by the probes.

In pic: The MINERVA-II1 rovers have successfully landed on asteroid Ryugu, snapped photos & taken the first successful hop!

Hayabusa2 is scheduled to deploy a larger rover called MASCOT in October and another tiny hopper next year.

The main spacecraft will collect a sample to bring to Earth for laboratory analysis.