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Scott Manley's recent video China's Mars Rover Zhurong Has Completed Its Primary Mission, Reaches New Milestone includes the following:

And if you thought that dropping a camera on the surface of Mars to take a photo of your rover was cool, well they dropped a camera off in deep space so it could take a photograph of the spacecraft in flight. Japan’s Hayabusa 2 mission made extensive use of deployable cameras to get scientific imagery, but these amazing images are entirely there for their PR value.

Question: How did Japan’s Hayabusa 2 mission "make extensive use of deployable cameras to get scientific imagery"? Did it ever produce a "PR selfie"?

screenshot from Scott Manley's video China's Mars Rover Zhurong Has Completed Its Primary Mission, Reaches New Milestone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSSs6FfBlgY

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If we discount photos of Hayabusa 2 such as this taken by its own cameras:

Image taken 4 seconds before touchdown with CAM-H
(image credit: JAXA). Image taken 4 seconds before touchdown with CAM-H (image credit: JAXA).

then the only image I could find of the Hayabusa 2 from one of its rover/hoppers is this:

Image captured by Rover-1A on September 21 at around 13:08 JST.
This is a color image taken immediately after separation from the spacecraft.
Hayabusa2 is at the top and the surface of Ryugu is bottom.
(image credit: JAXA)

Image captured by Rover-1A (Minerva-II1) on September 21 at around 13:08 JST. This is a color image taken immediately after separation from the spacecraft. Hayabusa2 is at the top and the surface of Ryugu is bottom (image credit: JAXA)

There are a couple of pictures of the landers taken by the main spacecraft taken shortly after they were deployed.

The Minerva-II2 rover soon after separating from the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft
(image credit: JAXA) The Minerva-II2 rover soon after separating from the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft (image credit: JAXA)

Image of Mascot from Hayabusa 2 (image credit: JAXA)

Image of Mascot from Hayabusa 2 (image credit: JAXA)

The JAXA website for Hayabusa2 is here. There is at least one study of the composition of Ryugu based on MASCOT images.

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