Blowing a crater in asteroid Ryugu The Hayabusa2 spacecraft was designed to collect samples from the nearby asteroid (162173) Ryugu and return them to Earth for laboratory analysis. Arakawa et al. describe how the spacecraft's Small Carry-on Impactor was fired into the asteroid's surface, producing an artificial impact crater. Analysis of the resulting plume of ejecta, recorded by a remote camera, sets an upper limit on the strength of the rubble-pile surface. The crater has a semicircular shape, probably due to a large boulder buried close to the impact location. The crater exposed material from Ryugu's subsurface, which has not been subjected to space weathering, that is suitable for collection by Hayabusa2. Science , this issue p. 67