Hayabusa asteroid mission comes home

The Japanese Hayabusa container hit the top of the atmosphere just after 1350 GMT, producing a bright fireball over southern Australia.
It A capsule thought to contain the first samples grabbed from the surface of an asteroid has returned to Earth.
had a shield to cope with the heat of re-entry and a parachute for the final drop to the ground.
A recovery team later reported they had identified the landing zone in the Woomera Prohibited Range.
"We just had a spectacular display out over the Outback skies of South Australia," said Professor Trevor Ireland, from the Australian National University, who will get to work on the samples
"We could see the little sample-return capsule separate from the main ship and lead its way in; and [we] just had this magnificent display of the break-up of Hayabusa," he told BBC News.
The Hayabusa mission was launched to asteroid Itokawa in 2003, spending three months at the 500m-long potato-shaped space rock in 2005.
The main spacecraft, along with the sample-storage capsule, should have come back to Earth in 2007, but a succession of technical problems delayed their return by three years.
Even now, there is still some uncertainty as to whether the capsule really does contain pieces of Itokawa.
Analysis has shown the Hayabusa spacecraft's capture mechanism malfunctioned at the moment it was supposed to pick up the asteroid rock fragments.
However, Japanese space agency (Jaxa) officials remain confident of success.
HAYABUSA'S HIGH-SPEED RETURN
(1) Three hours before re-entry, sample capsule was released
(2) At altitude of 200km, probe and capsule encountered atmosphere
(3) Capsule traveled at 12km/s; heat-shield had to work at 3,000C
(4) Main spacecraft had no protection and burnt up
(5) At 10km, capsule dumped shielding; deployed parachute
(6) Capsule was tracked to landing via beacon and radar
They say a lot of dust would have been kicked up when Hayabusa landed on the space rock to make the grab, and some of this material must have found its way inside the probe.
On the journey home, the Hayabusa team had to work around communication drop-outs and propulsion glitches.
But each time an issue came up, the scientists and engineers working on the project managed to find an elegant solution.
Just three hours before the spacecraft began its plunge into Earth's atmosphere, it pushed the sample capsule out in front.
The main spacecraft was destroyed during the descent, accounting for most of the spectacular light show south Australians saw in the nightsky.
The container, on the other hand, was equipped with a shield made from carbon phenolic resin which is capable of enduring temperatures that were expected to reach 3,000C on the re-entry.
Radar tracking and a beacon in the cannister itself were used by the recovery team to locate the parachute drop-point.
The capsule will not be approached until daylight hours.
"Tomorrow (Monday) or day after tomorrow, we will pick up the capsule itself. Maybe there is some powder or some sample in it," said Yoshiyuki Hasegawa, the associate executive director of Jaxa.
"We will package the capsule and then send it back by aircraft - it's a special aircraft - from the Woomera range to Tokyo International Airport, to go to our facility, our laboratory, where we will analyse the samples."
It could be some months before scientists are able to say with confidence that Hayabusa did indeed capture fragments of Itokawa.
"You hope for grams of sample but you can make do with much less than that," observed Dr Michael Zolensky who worked on Nasa's Stardust comet sample-return mission.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• hayabusa
• asteroid
• mission
• jaxa

[PinkaPallina1]

beautiful :) stars

[kiuhy8]

@PinkaPallina1 ty :)

[rivet001]

there is actually a craft coming in alongside the little white burning speck to the right. You see the underneath of it light up when it the larger bit lights up. If you go the other footage taken by the media the craft is clear as day. Interesting...

[kiuhy8]

@rivet001  thanks rivet :)

[bigmikey1979]

ufo passing it at :20 seconds opposite direction. busted !

[kiuhy8]

@bigmikey1979 yep :)

[carlosgeovannic]

Fantastic! Japaneses, I love you!

[c3mut]

@bigmikey1979 and yet our technology won against the ufo's... big time!

[Helge129]

@jonholloman It's not a meteor.

[jonholloman]

the metoer melts in our the 3rd layer of our amosphere and never reaches our surface p.s thank god :)

[Zodomir]

@kiuhy8 looks like a star in the sky

[bigmikey1979]

@jalienation not !!! a u.f. o. clearly... trajectory changes . UFO buddy sorry.

[jalienation]

@bigmikey1979 what??? looks like a star. because the pod is going so fast and the camera following makes it look like the star is moving in opposite direction. easy physics

[startwiththeballs]

@bigmikey1979, l see

[bigmikey1979]

@startwiththeballs not ! the object dives and doesnt stay in a straight trajectory. another one at :31. and ive seen dozens of ufos.