MINERVA would have been the first hopping space rover. The Soviet mission Phobos 2 also encountered a malfunction while attempting to deploy a hopping rover.

Scientific and engineering importance of the mission

Scientists' understanding of asteroids depends greatly on meteorite samples, but it is very difficult to match up meteorite samples with the exact asteroids from which they came. Hayabusa helped solve this problem by bringing back pristine samples from a specific, well-characterized

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