Hayabusa2 was the first mission to use rovers to explore an asteroid’s surface.
JAXA launched Hayabusa2 in December 2014 to study near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu. In 2018, the spacecraft delivered the MINERVA-II rover system, whose small hopping vehicles moved across the asteroid rather than rolling on conventional wheels.
The hopping design was necessary because Ryugu’s gravity is extremely weak. A normal wheeled rover could have lifted off or struggled to maintain traction. The rovers returned images and environmental measurements while hopping between locations on the surface.
Hayabusa2 also collected samples from Ryugu and returned them to Earth in December 2020. That sample-return achievement is distinct from the rover milestone, and Hayabusa2 is also distinct from the earlier Hayabusa mission, which visited Itokawa but did not deploy a successful surface rover. NASA’s later DART mission and other asteroid missions had different objectives.