Welcome back Hayabusa

[Winston Smith]

Most news is bad news on any front, business, environment, society etc. Good news is infinitesimal therefore when I read some uplifting news, although inconsequential and hardly noticed by the masses, I experience a childish pleasure.
This is a ‘heroic’ story of the little spacecraft that could. It finally returned home and I am glad it landed in Australia:



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Japan asteroid capsule lands in Australian outback June 14, 2010 - 8:49AM


A capsule thought to contain the first samples grabbed from the surface of an asteroid has returned to Earth.
The Japanese Hayabusa container hit the top of the atmosphere just after 1350 GMT, producing a bright fireball over southern Australia.
It 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.

After more than a year coasting through space, Hayabusa reignited its ion-powered engine to begin the second leg of what has become an extra-long trek home from the asteroid Itokawa, said officials with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
"We are continuing to pay careful attention to our onboard equipment and are doing our utmost to operate the Hayabusa with the greatest care," JAXA officials said in a mission update

Hayabusa had been flying in a silent coast mode since April 2007, when it officially began the 180 million mile (290 million km) trip home from Itokawa. The spacecraft arrived at Itokawa in 2005, but suffered a series of glitches and malfunctions that left flight controllers unsure whether it actually managed to collect a sample of the asteroid's surface.
Hayabusa also lost a smaller probe, dubbed Minerva, which was supposed to hop around Itokawa's surface and take close-up pictures. The probe was successfully deployed, but drifted off the asteroid's surface soon after, JAXA officials said at the time.
While practice landing attempts were plagued by glitches, Hayabusa did eventually touch down on the potato-shaped asteroid. The spacecraft also photographed the asteroid throughout its mission.
Hayabusa lost two of its three attitude-controlling gyroscopes during flight, with a subsequent fuel leak and communications issues forcing mission managers to delay its return by three years to June 2010.
Since its launch in May 2003, Hayabusa's ion engine has operated for about 31,000 hours. Ion engines accelerate spacecraft slowly by using electricity generated by solar arrays to charge a stream of xenon gas. The resulting charged particles, or ions, are then shot out a nozzle to generate thrust over time.

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[Winston Smith]

Japan asteroid probe returns | Video | Reuters.com