 What's your favorite most badass space probe that you've ever heard of? In recent years and months there have been amazing space probes like Curiosity and Rosetta. Curiosity notably landed on the surface of Mars using sky crane technology which had us all on the edge of our seats to wait and see if it was actually successful. Rosetta recently landed on a comet with its lander fillet and actually tried to use a harpoon technology to land onto this comet. While the harpoons didn't work it was still a pretty badass attempt at landing on a comet. It's been pretty amazing to watch what Rosetta has sent back to us. These gorgeous landscapes of comet 67p. I love space probes like Curiosity and Rosetta so much that I actually recently launched a website called Space Probes in order to really celebrate all the badass space probes that are out there. I created space probes with my friend Lisa Ballard who works at the study institute and together we created this site that catalogs all the human-made machines that freckle our solar system and dot our galaxy. For each space probe we handcrafted cute little descriptions of what each probe does and interesting things that you might want to know about it. Where possible we also utilize data from the deep space network. The network that essentially communicates with all the space probes and talks to them on a regular basis. Utilizing data from the deep space network we can actually see how far away all these different space probes are at any given time. Building space probes was a lot of fun. The most fun part was actually discovering an entirely new badass space probe that I hadn't heard of before. Hayabusa-2. Hayabusa-2 is emission from Japan that's actually going to go to an asteroid, sample it and return the samples back to earth. The asteroid that Hayabusa-2 intends to go to is asteroid 1999 Ju-3. Asteroids don't always have the best names but they're still very interesting to study and to learn more about how our solar system formed through. If going to an asteroid sampling it and returning the samples back to earth wasn't awesome enough what makes this space probe truly badass in my eyes is what's on it. Hayabusa-2 is jam packed with amazing technologies. This space probe comes jam packed with an impactor, three hopping rovers, a lander and a sampling horn. That's a lot of stuff for a little space probe to carry. A lot of space probes actually have really cool ideas and concepts for all these different things that they could do in the beginning but usually politics and budgetary cuts come into play and space probes get very pared down in terms of what they can do but not Hayabusa-2. Firstly it has an explosive impactor which is actually going to hurl at the surface of the asteroid in order to create an artificial crater in order to be able to actually study the insides of this asteroid. If that wasn't enough it also has three hopping rovers which is going to send onto the surface of the asteroid to hop around look around the asteroid and I guess have a really fun time. Also it's going to be sending a little small lander to also study the surface of the asteroid. The lander won't be hopping around like the little rovers will be but it'll still be studying the surface of the asteroid. Finally Hayabusa-2 comes with a sampling horn. This is essentially this little device that sticks out from the space probe and allows it to go up to the surface of the asteroid without landing on it give it a few pecks and get samples of the asteroid in order to return them back to earth. So essentially Hayabusa-2 will be going up to the surface of an asteroid giving it a few little kisses and then being able to fly away safely so that it can take those samples that it got from its little kisses and return them back to earth. Hayabusa-2 won't be reaching its asteroid until 2018 so it's still a ways off but I sincerely hope that a lot of other people realize just how cool this space probe is. I know I'm not the only one who gets excited about Hayabusa-2 though because there's a ton of fan art that has been created. People have been submitting fan art drawings and crafts and all these different adorable things in order to support and root for Hayabusa-2 and its hopeful success. To me you couldn't really ask for a more awesome space probe one that comes with mini space probes with it essentially and is actually going to be able to explore this asteroid in a variety of ways.