Image produced by JAXA
The Hayabusa probe developed by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) will be returning to Earth in the next few days with what many Japanese scientists hope will be a small sample from the near Earth asteroid 25143 Itokawa. This would mark the first time that a spacecraft has landed on a passing asteroid, collected samples, and returned them to Earth. Scientists worldwide hope that the contents from Itokawa will provide some insight as to the origin of our solar system.
Hayabusa, which means Falcon in Japanese, Launched May 9, 2003, from the Kagoshima Space Center, in Uchinoura, Japan. During it's visit to the asteroid it was meant to test the engineering of several new technologies during it's mission to Itokawa including the use of electrical propulsion, autonomous navigation, as well as new concepts for collecting samples from extra planetary objects and reentering the Earth's atmosphere ( JAXA ).
This image produced by The Sydney Morning Herald
The mission was to launch the Hayabusa, rendezvous with Itokawa, capture a sample of the asteroid's soil, return back to Earth, and crash land into the Australian desert for retrieval. However, the refrigerator sized spacecraft encountered several malfunctions along the way including total engine failure, a fuel leak, communications blackouts, a loss of power in an electrical battery, as well as a failure to deploy one of the mechanisms needed to collect the dirt sample from the potato shaped planet causing the mission to take about three years longer than expected(Space.com).
The Hayabusa probe developed by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) will be returning to Earth in the next few days with what many Japanese scientists hope will be a small sample from the near Earth asteroid 25143 Itokawa. This would mark the first time that a spacecraft has landed on a passing asteroid, collected samples, and returned them to Earth. Scientists worldwide hope that the contents from Itokawa will provide some insight as to the origin of our solar system.
Hayabusa, which means Falcon in Japanese, Launched May 9, 2003, from the Kagoshima Space Center, in Uchinoura, Japan. During it's visit to the asteroid it was meant to test the engineering of several new technologies during it's mission to Itokawa including the use of electrical propulsion, autonomous navigation, as well as new concepts for collecting samples from extra planetary objects and reentering the Earth's atmosphere ( JAXA ).
This image produced by The Sydney Morning HeraldThe mission was to launch the Hayabusa, rendezvous with Itokawa, capture a sample of the asteroid's soil, return back to Earth, and crash land into the Australian desert for retrieval. However, the refrigerator sized spacecraft encountered several malfunctions along the way including total engine failure, a fuel leak, communications blackouts, a loss of power in an electrical battery, as well as a failure to deploy one of the mechanisms needed to collect the dirt sample from the potato shaped planet causing the mission to take about three years longer than expected(Space.com).
Amazingly, the Japanese were able to rig two of its damaged engines back to health in such a way as to return the Hayabusa back to it's Earth trajectory. "The mission and its team have faced and overcome several challenges over the past seven years. This round-trip journey is a significant space achievement and one which NASA is proud to be part of." Tommy Thompson, NASA's Hayabusa project manager from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Scientific teams from Japan, Australia, and the United States are on standby to watch the Hayabusa drop its payload back into the Earth's atmosphere. Upon it's violent reentry, NASA will be able to study the affects of the violent friction on the spacecraft as it descends at nearly 26,000 mph to the Woomera Prohibited Area in South Australia on Sunday night, at the end of its 4billion-kilometre journey. The reentry will provide scientists valuable data on thermal protection systems under high velocity conditions which will hopefully be used in future sample recovery missions from Mars. Hopefully, the capsule will contain materials left over from events that created the solar system billions of years ago. "Certainly, any samples retrieved from Itokawa will provide exciting new insights to understanding the early history of the solar system. This will be the icing on the cake, as this mission has already taught us so much, " said Tommy Thompson, NASA's Hayabusa project manager from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Scientific teams from Japan, Australia, and the United States are on standby to watch the Hayabusa drop its payload back into the Earth's atmosphere. Upon it's violent reentry, NASA will be able to study the affects of the violent friction on the spacecraft as it descends at nearly 26,000 mph to the Woomera Prohibited Area in South Australia on Sunday night, at the end of its 4billion-kilometre journey. The reentry will provide scientists valuable data on thermal protection systems under high velocity conditions which will hopefully be used in future sample recovery missions from Mars. Hopefully, the capsule will contain materials left over from events that created the solar system billions of years ago. "Certainly, any samples retrieved from Itokawa will provide exciting new insights to understanding the early history of the solar system. This will be the icing on the cake, as this mission has already taught us so much, " said Tommy Thompson, NASA's Hayabusa project manager from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
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