Japanese spacecraft to make history

November 7th, 2005 in Space & Earth /
$An artist\'s impression of the Hayabusa probe$

A Japanese spacecraft will reportedly make history by the end of the month when it touches down on an asteroid 180 million miles from Earth to gather dust.

The satellite -- Hayabusa or "Falcon" -- will make two or three touch-and-goes to create and capture dust on the asteroid Itokawa and then to return to Earth with a 10th of an ounce of asteroid dust, The Washington Post reported Monday.

Hayabusa would become the first spacecraft from Earth to land on a celestial body and bring something back from it since U.S. astronauts collected samples from the moon in 1972.

The spacecraft was launched May 9, 2003. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency named the asteroid Itokawa, after Hideo Itokawa, the father of the Japanese space program.

Scientists said Hayabusa must finish its mission by the end of the month to be in proper alignment for its 19-month journey to Earth. Hayabusa's re-entry capsule containing the dust samples is to parachute into Australia's southern desert in June 2007.

HAYABUSA’s mission: to bring back samples from an asteroid and investigate the mysteries of the birth of the solar system.

HAYABUSA (MUSES-C) has been developed to investigate asteroids. Asteroids are celestial bodies that are smaller than planets but are part of the solar system. HAYABUSA was launched on May 9th, 2003, and has been flying steadily towards an asteroid named "Itokawa," after the late Dr. Hideo Itokawa, the father of Japan’s space development program. HAYABUSA is traveling through space using an ion engine. It will orbit the asteroid, land on it, and bring back a sample from its surface.

Until now, the only extra-terrestrial celestial body from which we have gathered samples is the Moon. But since the matter that comprises large bodies such as the planets and the Moon has changed over time due to thermal processes, these bodies cannot provide us with a pristine record of the solar system. Asteroids, on the other hand, are believed to be small enough to have preserved the state of the early solar system and are sometimes referred to as celestial fossils. A soil sample from an asteroid can give us clues about the raw materials that made up planets and asteroids in their formative years, and about the state of the inside of a solar nebula around the time of the birth of the planets. However small the sample amount may be, its scientific significance is tremendous.

HAYABUSA’s mission will play an important role in future space-probe journeys.

HAYABUSA employs a new technology - the ion engine. This engine first ionizes the propellant gas, Xenon, then electrically accelerates and emits the ions, to propel itself forward. As it is a highly efficient engine, it is expected to be an important technological tool for our future exploration of the Moon and the planets. HAYABUSA will demonstrate this technology.

Another innovation that HAYABUSA will demonstrate is the Autonomous Navigation System, which enables the probe to approach a far-away asteroid without human guidance. The system works by measuring the distance to the asteroid with the Optical Navigation Camera, and using Light Detection and Ranging.

HAYABUSA will not only gather samples but also observe the asteroid with various scientific devices and measures. For that purpose, it is equipped with a Telescope Wide-View Cameras and Light Detection and Ranging, as well as with a Near Infrared Spectrometer. It will also employ a hopping robot, which can move around on the asteroid’s surface. When HAYABUSA returns to Earth, a re-entry capsule bearing a surface sample from the asteroid will separate from it and plunge into the Earth’s atmosphere. This is also a very important experiment in space engineering.