Hayabusa2 made history on Feb. 22 when it successfully touched down on the boulder-strewn asteroid and collected some surface fragments.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said Hayabusa2 will drop an impactor the size of a baseball weighing 2 kilograms on the asteroid on April 5 to collect samples from deeper underground that have not been exposed to the sun or space rays.

The mission will require the spacecraft to move quickly to the other side of the asteroid so it won’t get hit by flying shards from the blast, JAXA project engineer Takanao Saeki said. “It will be very challenging.”

While moving away, Hayabusa2 will leave a camera to capture the outcome. The spacecraft is to wait a few weeks before returning to the area above the crater for observations.

The mission will allow JAXA scientists to analyze details of the crater to determine the history of the asteroid, said Koji Wada, who is in charge of the project.

A day before the mission, Hayabusa2 will start descending to the asteroid from its home position of 20 kilometers away. It will drop a cone-shaped piece of equipment containing explosives that will blast off a copper plate on its bottom. That will turn into a ball and slam into the asteroid at 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) per second.

JAXA projects it will create a crater of up to 10 meters in diameter with a depth of 1 meter if the underground structure is soft. A crater created on a rock-like structure would be smaller.

During its February touchdown, Hayabusa2 extended a sampler pipe and shot a pinball-like bullet into the asteroid surface to collect dust and tiny fragments.

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