"The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency mission collected one sample from the asteroid’s surface in February 2019, then fired a copper 'bullet' into the aste

"The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency mission collected one sample from the asteroid’s surface in February 2019, then fired a copper 'bullet' into the asteroid to create a 33-foot (10-meter) wide impact crater." 10 meters seems like a pretty impressive crater for a science payload launched from a deep space probe. In case anyone else is curious, there's a detailed writeup[1] about the Small Carry-on Impactor (SCI) that was used. It looks a little bit like a swords-into-plowshares version of a HEAT warhead. A shaped plastic explosive charge simultaneously launched and deformed a copper plate so that by the time it hit the asteroid, the projectile was shaped like a hollow bullet. ~2kg moving at ~2km/sec, so about 4 million Joules, or about 200 times the kinetic energy of a .50 BMG round. That's some bullet! [1] https://www.planetary.org/articles/what-to-expect-hayabusa2-sci https://www.planetary.org/articles/what-to-expect-hayabusa2-...