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Itokawa / Hayabusa

Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 3:33 pm
by bystander
Hayabusa's coming home
Planetary Society Blog - 21 April 2010
It really looks like Hayabusa is going to make it home. Hayabusa's sample return capsule will be returning to Earth on June 13, 2010, landing in the Woomera Prohibited Area, Australia. These basic facts have been a matter of public knowledge for a while, but became official today with an announcement from the Australian Ministry of Defence. The release quotes Australian Defence Minister Senator John Faulkner as saying: "Australian authorities will assist JAXA in ensuring the recovery of the spacecraft on its return and are working closely with their Japanese counterparts on the proposed path and landing of Hayabusa."
Image
Guidance strategy for Hayabusa's sample return
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Planned location of the Hayabusa sample return

HAYABUSA the Asteroid Explorer

Re: PS: It's official: Hayabusa's coming home

Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 3:38 pm
by makc

PS: It's official: Hayabusa's coming home

Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2010 5:29 pm
by bystander
Planetary Society: Space Topics: Hayabusa (MUSES-C)

Hayabusa: Sighting the homeworld
Planetary Society Blog | 17 May 2010
Coming closer every day, Mr. Hayabusa has sighted his final destination: his homeworld, Earth, and its attendant Moon. It's not an impressive photo, because even at Hayabusa's 13-plus-million-kilometer distance from Earth, our planet is too bright, overpowering the design limits of the sensitive star tracker camera that was used to take this navigational image. What's significant about it is that Hayabusa is close enough that the camera no longer sees the Earth-Moon system as one searingly bright point of light; the star tracker now resolves ours as a double planet, a big rocky world with a big rocky companion, spinning together in space.

Six days left for Hayabusa: A recap of the mission
Planetary Society Blog | 07 June 2010
The Hayabusa spacecraft is about to die.

On Sunday, June 13, at 14:00 UTC, Hayabusa will burn up in Earth's atmosphere, bringing its dramatic seven-year mission to an end. But, in doing so, it will hopefully return a tiny capsule that will hopefully contain some dust from an asteroid, and so become the first mission ever to return a sample of material snatched from the surface of a world beyond the Moon.

I will be posting frequent updates on the status of Hayabusa during these final days. While you wait for updates, you might enjoy reading about some of this mission's dramatic history. Hayabusa's mission has been one of dizzying highs and seemingly impossible-to-overcome lows. Here are some of the highlights, with links to feature articles and past blog entries. ...

Japanese space probe Hayabusa close to home
PhysOrg | Space Exploration | 08 June 2010
Hayabusa, the Japanese space probe launched in 2003, is returning home from its five-billion-kilometer round-trip journey to collect samples from the asteroid 25143 Itokawa.

According to the Japanese Space Agency, JAXA, the space probe has successfully fired its thrusters for its third Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM) to set it on course for a landing at the Woomera Test Range in the South Australian outback. Only one more correction maneuver remains, and is scheduled for later this week.

The spacecraft’s sample return capsule containing any samples is scheduled to detach from the probe and land at Woomera at about 1400 GMT on June 13. The US space agency, NASA, is sending a DC-8 flying laboratory from California to South Australia to record the re-entry and landing using its barrage of image and spectrographic cameras.

Hayabusa: "I did my best!"
Planetary Society Blog | 08 June 2010
While he was in Japan to observe IKAROS' sail deployment, Lou Friedman couldn't help but notice the country's excitement over the impending return of Hayabusa. He sent an email to me this morning, saying:
Hayabusa has become an anthropomorphic hero in Japan, usually depicted in newspapers and in publications as a male character. The name means "Falcon," and the Japanese Falcon is getting a lot more publicity in Japan than SpaceX's rocket Falcon 9 in the U.S. Movies and stories are being written about it. Its saga is an adventure story of heroism.

The mission has an exceedingly ambitious goal using a new technology from a space center that has not yet completed a planetary mission. While there have been many setbacks and engineering difficulties on its seven-year mission, it has nonetheless been brilliantly programmed and controlled by its mission operators and is now on the verge of returning to Earth. Automated sample return from the surface of a solar system body has only been done once before, by the Soviet Union from the Moon in 1972. It is difficult. Whatever is the result, the mission is an engineering triumph.
...
Meanwhile, now that the third trajectory maneuver has been successful in targeting Hayabusa at its planned entry point, preparations are underway to receive the capsule in Australia. ...

A brief history of Hayabusa
Planetary Society Blog | 08 June 2010
For those of you who found my Hayabusa mission recap too long, here's a graphical version of the history of the Hayabusa mission. In a week I'll know where exactly to draw that last line segment. Enjoy!
  • Image
    A brief history of the Hayabusa mission, in graphical format.
    (Credit: © Emily Lakdawalla, The Planetary Society)

Hayabusa's final approach on target; Japan's ready to receive samples
Planetary Society Blog | 09 June 2010
The mission team reported last night that Hayabusa's final maneuver, a three-hour "firing" of its ion thrusters to fine-tune the spacecraft's trajectory toward Australia, was successful. That is almost certainly the very last time that Hayabusa will ever use its ion engines -- the spacecraft has completed its ferrying work with a combined 40,000 hours of ion engine thrust, a mind-boggling number. (I think that's what this later Hayabusa blog entry is talking about.) Of course it must still separate the return capsule, an event that should happen just three hours before it lands on June 13. All continues to go well.

The Hayabusa team posted a note about optical observations of the entry that suggests it will be difficult for most people to observe. However, via Daniel Fischer I learned that a NASA DC-8 airplane has headed to Australia to attempt to observe the capsule's entry -- and also to broadcast live video of the event!! ... That site also says that the entry should happen at 13:51 UT. They are clearly not sure they'll manage to accomplish a live broadcast, but they do plan to post video afterward.

Meanwhile, JAXA is ready to accept the sample return capsule and discover what's inside. While he was in Japan for the IKAROS sail deployment, Lou Friedman was treated to a tour of the Planetary Sample Curation Facility.

NASA Helps in Upcoming Asteroid Mission Homecoming
NASA JPL (2010-194) - 09 June 2010
The space and astronomy worlds have June 13 circled on the calendar.

That's when the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) expects the sample return capsule of the agency's technology demonstrator spacecraft, Hayabusa, to boomerang back to Earth. The capsule, along with its mother ship, visited a near-Earth asteroid, Itokawa, five years ago and has logged about 2 billion kilometers (1.25 billion miles) since its launch in May 2003.

With the return of the Hayabusa capsule, targeted for June 13 at Australia's remote Woomera Test Range in South Australia, JAXA will have concluded a remarkable mission of exploration -- one in which NASA scientists and engineers are playing a contributing role.

NASA Astronomers to Observe Hayabusa Homecoming
NASA Ames (10-48AR) - 09 June 2010
A group of astronomers from NASA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and other organizations are flying to the other side of the world for a front row seat and a rare opportunity to study a spacecraft's targeted fiery descent through Earth's atmosphere.

A Douglas DC-8 airborne laboratory departed yesterday evening from NASA’s Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility at Palmdale, Calif., carrying nearly 30 scientists and their instruments to Melbourne, Australia to make final preparations for the highly-anticipated return of JAXA's Hayabusa spacecraft. This luminous re-entry will mark the end of the spacecraft's seven-year journey to bring a sample of asteroid Itokawa back to Earth. Hayabusa is expected to fall to Earth over a vast, unpopulated area of Australia at approximately midnight locally, or 7 a.m. PDT, on Sunday, June 13, 2010. Earlier this week, JAXA announced it successfully completed the guidance of the Hayabusa spacecraft, so that it will land in the Woomera Prohibited Area in Australia.
...
The team’s primary goal during the airborne mission is to study the Hayabusa capsule's re-entry to gain technological insight into the heat shield that designers and engineers can use while developing future exploration vehicles. Because of Hayabusa's unique heat shield material, shape and the tremendous interplanetary re-entry speed of 7.58 miles per second, scientists expect its descent will provide new, valuable information about heat shields for computer models of re-entry conditions. JAXA’s Hayabusa is expected to be the second fastest man-made object to return to Earth; NASA's Stardust sample return capsule set the record re-entry speed of 7.95 miles per second in January 2006.
...
The airborne observation team also will provide JAXA with data and images obtained during the flight to correlate with JAXA's ground optical and radio observations and assist in locating the capsule on Earth. Since the breakup of the main spacecraft will be visible as well, scientists will use images of the debris to validate computer models astronomers use to predict how an object will fragment and disperse as it enters Earth’s atmosphere at these high speeds.

NASA astronomers made similar airborne studies from NASA's DC-8 flying observatory for the September 2008 re-entry of the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle "Jules Verne," as well as the Stardust sample return re-entry airborne campaigns. During those missions, NASA scientists studied the light emitted by the descending spacecraft, to better understand the mechanisms of atmospheric entry heats of natural and man-made objects.

Hayabusa: Waiting
Planetary Society Blog - 10 June 2010
We're in the final days of the Hayabusa mission, but until Sunday I think we're in a state of "no news is good news."

Which is not to say that things aren't busy on Earth. NASA's Ames Research Center issued a press release describing their preparations for the arrival of Hayabusa; they are treating the incoming capsule as an artificial meteor and will be studying its fireball with every instrument at their disposal to learn about what makes natural meteors glow and about what's really going on with sample return capsules when they are heated to fantastic temperatures, near 3,000° Celsius / 5,000° Fahrenheit.

Last night the Japan broadcasting corporation NHK showed a 30-minute documentary about "Hayabusa's 7-year adventure," so Twitter, at least, lit up with discussion of the incoming spacecraft.

Meanwhile, in Australia, an antenna now waits to listen for the faint signal sent from of Hayabusa's sample return capsule; they are running through rehearsals to prepare for the midnight return of the capsule on June 13.

Re: PS: It's official: Hayabusa's coming home

Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2010 9:04 pm
by neufer
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/index.jsp?cid=186892

Space: How Japan's Hayabusa Asteroid Mission Worked

Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2010 6:27 pm
by bystander
How Japan's Hayabusa Asteroid Mission Worked
Space.com - 11 June 2010
Japan's Hayabusa asteroid probe launched in 2003 on an ambitious mission to sample a nearby asteroid and return those samples to Earth a few years later, but some things went wrong along the way – adding a full three extra years onto the hard-luck probe's mission. This graphic shows the long and winding road of Japan's Hayabusa mission to visit and sample the asteroid Itokawa.
Image

PS: Preparing for Hayabusa's return

Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2010 4:22 pm
by bystander
Preparing for Hayabusa's return
Planetary Society Blog | 11 June 2010
I confirmed the reentry time is at 13:51 UT (13 June 2010 09:51 EDT), with landing of the capsule under its parachute about 20 minutes later.
...
Here are links to webcasts that I know about The NASA DC-8 that will be observing the entry from the air plans to offer live feed, but based on what they say on their website I am not sanguine about them being able to handle the bandwidth in real time; here's a Google Earth KML file to use to track the DC-8. Live! Universe is offering a Ustream feed broadcast from Glendambo; I have no idea whether it'll show anything. Media-i.com and NEC will be offering the JAXA control room feed, which will have no audio. "Space Education Television" will be offering some kind of broadcast, but I'm not sure whether it's the audio-less control room feed or something commented; if commented, it'll be in Japanese.
...
Here's the expected timeline over the next hours, as the Hayabusa mission comes to a dramatic end. This timeline, which is copied from one posted here, uses 22:51:00 JST (13:51:00 UT) as the nominal atmospheric entry time; the entry time is often reported more approximately as 14:00:00 UT.
Time (UTC)Time (PDT)Event
Jun 12 - 19:0012:00Hayabusa passes within the Moon's orbit, 380,000 kilometers from Earth
Jun 13 - 07:00MidnightHayabusa passes over Uchinoura Bay, from which it launched seven years ago
10:5103:51At an altitude of 60,000 kilometers (roughly four Earth diameters), the sample return capsule separates with a velocity, relative to the mothership, of 10 centimeters per second. With three hours remaining in the flight, the two will be separated only by about a kilometer when they hit the top of Earth's atmosphere.
13:4606:46Hayabusa and the capsule are at an altitude of only 600 kilometers, traveling at 12 kilometers per second, and pass over western Australia
13:5106:51Atmospheric entry at an altitude of 200 kilometers and a shallow angle of only 10 degrees. Over the next minute or two, the capsule and mothership begin to shine brightly, achieving a maximum brightness of magnitude -5 (brighter than Venus). The mothership, not designed for atmospheric entry, will explode and burn up.
????????Fore and aft shields of reentry capsule separate; parachute deploys
About 14:11About 07:11Landing It will take 15 to 20 minutes for the capsule to descend under parachute.

Re: PS: It's official: Hayabusa's coming home

Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2010 6:25 pm
by rstevenson
Over the next minute or two, the capsule and mothership begin to shine bleftly, achieving a maximum bleftness of magnitude -5 (blefter than Venus).
Gotta be careful with that auto-search and replace. :P

Rob

Re: PS: It's official: Hayabusa's coming home

Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2010 7:15 pm
by bystander
:lol: Thanks, Rob! :oops:

It's official: Hayabusa is home!

Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 6:08 pm
by bystander
NASA Aircraft Videos Hayabusa Re-Entry
Hayabusa Generates Re-Entry Fireball Over Australia [UPDATE]
Discovery Space News - 13 June 2010
As expected, the Hayabusa mission has come to an end in the Australian skies. Just after 9:51 a.m. EST (11:21 p.m. local time), a bright fireball lit up the Australian Outback as the main body of the Hayabusa spacecraft re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, burning up. The search is now on for the sample return capsule that should have opened its parachute, floating back to Earth. More to follow...
Click to view full size image
A sequence of images (screen grabs from the live mission coverage) showing the Hayabusa
fireball as the spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere over Australia (JAXA/Ian O'Neill).

Click to view full size image
Just in case you thought the re-entry of the Japanese Hayabusa spacecraft couldn't get any better, NASA has just released an aerial video of the speeding sample return capsule followed by the break-up of the rest of the probe as the whole lot tumbled through the Earth's atmosphere.

"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," Trevor Ireland, from the Australian National University, [urlhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10285973.stm]told the BBC[/url].

The video was taken by NASA's highly modified McDonnell Douglas DC-8 jetliner that was flying above Australia as Hayabusa re-entered. Zooming in on the brightening dot, scientists aboard the flying laboratory captured the sparkling break-up of Hayabusa while also tracking the sample return capsule speed ahead.

Take a look at the YouTube video copied from the original:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-Xp_-_g ... r_embedded[/youtube]
There's more good news. According to several news sources, the sample return capsule is in one piece.

On the UK's BBC News 24, scientists are reporting that the capsule is "in good shape," but they won't be able to move it until the morning as it is too dangerous to land the transport helicopter in the landing zone at night.

Presumably, the capsule's parachute operated as expected, allowing the capsule (hopefully containing the precious asteroid dust) to land safely in the Australian Outback.

PS: Welcome home, Hayabusa!

Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 6:55 pm
by bystander
Welcome home, Hayabusa!
Planetary Society Blog | 13 June 2010
At 13:51 UTC, the Hayabusa spacecraft -- having traveled to an asteroid and back, surviving countless challenges -- broke up into a fiery meteor over the midnight, midwinter Australian sky.
Image
In ten screen caps from a Web camera feed run by Wakayama University, the Hayabusa
spacecraft ends its seven-year mission by burning up over Australian skies.
(Wakayama University / animation by Emily Lakdawalla)
Its capsule should now be on the ground. Word via Twitter is that the beacon signal was picked up from the capsule. It will be tracked and located via helicopter tonight, but they will not go out to retrieve it until daylight, some hours from now.
..
here's an amazing shot from Yomiuri Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper:
Image
Hayabusa lights up the Australian sky (© Ozaki Takashi, Yomiuri Shimbun)

Hayabusa's return: a review
Planetary Society Blog | 13 June 2010

Image Image
Hayabusa's last view (left: original data) (right: cleaned up) (JAXA / Gordan Ugarkovic)
This is the final photo captured by Hayabusa as it approached its reentry into Earth's atmosphere,
taken roughly an hour before the end of the mission, after it had already released the sample capsule.


Image
The Death of the Falcon (NASA / ARC / Emily Lakdawalla)
The movie captures the fiery breakup of the Hayabusa mothership, as well as the steadier burn of the
sample return capsule. To produce this animation, one frame per second was extracted from the full
movie, and the frames aligned on the position of the reentry capsule. Then the contrast was adjusted
to set the sky black and emphasize subtler features in the fireballs.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IAX9Hsl ... r_embedded[/youtube]
Japan Broadcasting Corporation news report with video shot from the ground.

Hayabusa sample capsule photographed on the ground in Australia
Planetary Society Blog | 13 June 2010

Image
Hayabusa sample return capsule sitting in the Woomera desert, Australia (JAXA)
On June 14, 2010, following its dramatic, fiery reentry the night before, the Hayabusa sample return
capsule sat on the ground in the Woomera Prohibited Area, Australia, waiting to be retrieved.

BA: Did Hayabusa return empty-handed?

Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 10:33 am
by bystander
Did Hayabusa return empty-handed?
Bad Astronomy | 03 July 2010
The New York Times is reporting that the Japanese space probe Hayabusa — sent to physically land on the asteroid Itokawa, get a sample of the rock, and return to Earth — may have come back without such samples. While it’s not confirmed yet, it will be disappointing news if true.

Hayabusa was plagued with problems, from faulty engines to a misfiring mechanism designed to force pieces of the asteroid into a collection container. Despite these issues, engineers were able to coax the probe back into an Earth-return orbit and retrieve the sample container after a dramatic re-entry. Apparently there are traces of gas which may be vaporized rock from Itokawa, but no solid chunks. I’m sure they’ll be scouring the container to look for microscopic pieces as well.

hayabusa_itokawaI hope they find some. Itokawa is a rubble pile, an asteroid that has been shattered by collisions and held together by its own gravity. We know very little about such asteroids, and we need to find out more if we should ever see one on a collision course with Earth and want to push it out of the way. And we do want to do that!

But even if Hayabusa didn’t get any samples, Japan learned a lot of valuable information on how to run (and save!) a space mission of this depth and complexity, and scientists got a lot of info about Itokawa itself. Hayabusa voyaged for seven years in space, and despite these problems I think that the scientists and engineers at the Japanese space agency JAXA should be proud.

PhysOrg: Japanese lab finds 'minute particles' in asteroid p

Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 10:36 am
by bystander
Japanese lab finds 'minute particles' in asteroid pod
PhysOrg | Space Exploration | 05 July 2010
Japan's space agency said Monday it has found "minute particles" of what it hopes is asteroid dust in the capsule of the space probe Hayabusa which returned to Earth last month.

Scientists hope any dust samples from the potato-shaped asteroid Itokawa could help reveal secrets about the origins of the solar system.

"We have started the opening process of the sample container of Hayabusa since June 24, 2010 and confirmed there are minute particles," the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said.

But the agency added it remained unclear whether the particles are contaminants from Earth or come from Itokawa which the space probe landed on during its multi-billion-kilometre (mile) journey.

It is expected to take months to get the final results of the analysis.

Confirmed: Hayabusa has returned samples from asteroid

Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 6:12 pm
by bystander
Confirmed: Hayabusa has returned samples from asteroid Itokawa
JAXA | via Space Spin | 16 Nov 2010
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has been engaged in collecting and categorizing particles in the sampler container that were brought back by the instrumental module of the asteroid exploration spacecraft Hayabusa.

Based on the results of the scanning electron microscope (SEM) observations and analyses of samples that were collected with a special spatula from sample catcher compartment "A", about 1,500 grains were identified as rocky particles, and most of them were judged to be of extraterrestrial origin, and definitely from asteroid Itokawa.

Their size is mostly less than 10 micrometers, and handling these grains requires very special skills and techniques. JAXA is developing the necessary handling techniques and preparing the associated equipment for the initial (but more detailed) analyses of these ultra-minute particles.

Source: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)

Asteroid Itokawa Sample Return

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 7:05 pm
by bystander
Asteroid Itokawa Sample Return
NASA Astrobiology | 29 Dec 2010
The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hayabusa spacecraft has brought home to Earth tiny pieces of an alien world–asteroid Itokawa.

"It's an incredible feeling to have another world right in the palm of your hand," says Mike Zolensky, Associate Curator for Interplanetary Dust at the Johnson Space Center, and one of the three non-Japanese members of the science team. "We're seeing for the first time, up close, what an asteroid is actually made of!"

Dust from Asteroid Confirms Source of Earth-Bound Meteorites

Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2011 11:06 pm
by bystander
Dust Scooped From Asteroid Confirms Source of Earth-Bound Meteorites
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) | 2011 Aug 25
Researchers got their first up-close look at dust from a small, stony asteroid after the Hayabusa spacecraft scooped up the dust from the asteroid’s surface and brought it back to Earth. Analysis of the dust particles, detailed in the 26 August issue of Science, confirms a long-standing suspicion: Most common meteorites found here on Earth, known as ordinary chondrites, are born from these stony, or S-type, asteroids.

Since chondrites are among the most primitive objects in the solar system, the discovery also means that these asteroids have been recording a long and rich history of early solar system events.

“Science is very excited and pleased to be presenting these important scientific analyses,” said Brooks Hanson, the journal’s deputy editor for the physical sciences. “The first samples that researchers collected beyond Earth were from the moon, and the first analyses of those samples were also published in Science. Those samples, along with the more recent sampling of a comet and the solar wind, have changed our understanding of the solar system and Earth. They are still yielding important results.”

The Hayabusa spacecraft was launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in 2003 to sample the surface of the near-Earth asteroid known as 25143 Itokawa. The unmanned vessel reached its destination a little more than two years later—and in November 2005, it made two separate touchdowns on the surface of Itokawa.

Although its primary sampler malfunctioned, the spacecraft was able to strike the asteroid’s surface with an elastic sampling horn and catch the small amount of loose surface material, or regolith, that was kicked up. After reentering Earth’s atmosphere and landing in South Australia in June 2010, Hayabusa’s delicate samples were analyzed extensively by various teams of researchers.

“These Hayabusa samples are the first samples of an asteroid,” Hanson said. “Not only do they provide important information about the history of the asteroid Itokawa, but by providing the needed ground truth that is only possible through direct sampling, they also help make other important samples—like meteorite collections and the lunar samples—even more useful.”

The asteroid sampled by Hayabusa is a rocky, S-type asteroid with the appearance of a rubble pile. Based on observations from the ground, researchers believed that similar S-type asteroids, generally located in our solar system’s inner and middle asteroid belt, are responsible for most of the small meteorites that regularly strike Earth.

But the visible spectra—the unique fingerprint of reflected light—of these asteroids have never precisely matched those of ordinary chondrites, leaving researchers suspicious of their actual affiliation. The only way to confirm a direct relationship between meteorites and the S-type asteroids was to sample the regolith directly from an asteroid’s surface.

Tomoki Nakamura from Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan and colleagues in Japan and the United States were among the first to analyze the regolith brought back by Hayabusa. The team of researchers used a combination of powerful electron microscopes and X-ray diffraction techniques to study the mineral chemistry of Itokawa’s dust particles.

“Our study demonstrates that the rocky particles recovered from the S-type asteroid are identical to ordinary chondrites, which proves that asteroids are indeed very primitive solar system bodies,” said Nakamura.

The researchers also noticed that Itokawa’s regolith has gone through significant heating and impact shocks. Based on its size, they conclude that the asteroid is actually made up of small fragments of a much bigger asteroid.

“The particles recovered from the asteroid have experienced long-term heating at about 800 degrees Celsius,” said Nakamura. “But to reach 800 degrees, an asteroid would need to be about 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) in diameter. The current size of Itokawa is much smaller than that, so it must have first formed as a larger body, then been broken by an impact event and reassembled in its current form.”

Separate teams of researchers, including Mitsuru Ebihara from Tokyo Metropolitan University and colleagues from the United States and Australia, cut open the tiny regolith grains returned by Hayabusa to get a look at the minerals inside them. Their composition shows that the dust grains have preserved a record of primitive elements from the early solar system. Those mineral compositions now can be compared to tens of thousands of meteorites that have fallen to Earth, and correlated to the visible spectra of other asteroids in space.

Akira Tsuchiyama from Osaka University in Toyonaka, Japan and colleagues from around the world also analyzed the three-dimensional structures of the dust particles. Since dust from the surface of the moon is the only other type of extraterrestrial regolith that researchers have been able to sample directly (from the Apollo and Luna missions), the researchers closely compared the two types.

“The cool thing about this Itokawa analysis is the tremendous amount of data we can get from such a small sample,” said Michael Zolensky of the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, a co-author of the research. “When researchers analyzed regolith from the moon, they needed kilogram-sized samples. But for the past 40 years, experts have been developing technologies to analyze extremely small samples. Now, we’ve gained all this information about Itokawa with only a few nanograms of dust from the asteroid.”

According to the researchers, Itokawa’s regolith has been shaped by erosion and surface impacts on the asteroid. Lunar regolith, which has spent more time exposed to solar winds and space weathering, has been more chemically altered.

Takaaki Noguchi from Ibaraki University in Mito, Japan, and colleagues cite this chemical difference between the lunar dust and the Itokawa samples as one of the reasons astronomers have never been able to definitively tie ordinary chondrites to S-type asteroids in the past.

“Space weathering is the interaction between the surface of airless bodies, like asteroids and the moon, and the energetic particles in space,” said Noguchi. “When these energetic particles—like solar wind, plasma ejected from the Sun, and fast-traveling micrometeoroids—strike an object, pieces of them condense on the surface of that object. In the vacuum of space, such deposits can create small iron particles that greatly affect the visible spectra of these celestial bodies when they are viewed from Earth.”

Instead of using lunar samples to estimate the space weathering on an asteroid, researchers now can turn to the asteroid regolith for direct insight into such processes.

Two more international studies led by Keisuke Nagao from the University of Tokyo and Hisayoshi Yurimoto from Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan, have determined how long the regolith material has been on the surface of Itokawa and have established a direct link between the oxygen isotopes in ordinary chondrites and their parent, S-type asteroids.

According to the researchers, the dust from Itokawa has been on the surface of the asteroid for less than eight million years. They suggest that regolith material from such small asteroids might escape easily into space to become meteorites, traveling toward Earth.

“This dust from the surface of the Itokawa asteroid will become a sort of Rosetta Stone for astronomers to use,” according to Zolensky. “Now that we understand the bulk mineral and chemical composition of the Hayabusa sample, we can compare it to meteorites that have struck the Earth and try to determine which asteroids the chondrites came from.”

Asteroid visit finds familiar dust
Nature News | Richard A. Lovett | 2011 Aug 25
Samples from 25143 Itokawa show it has similar make-up to most meteorites on Earth.

Dust grains scooped from a 500-metre-long asteroid have been linked to the most common type of meteorites found on Earth, report a team of Japanese scientists in a suite of papers in Science today.

The samples were collected from the asteroid's surface by Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft after a seven-year journey from Earth. The near-Earth asteroid, measuring 200 metres across, is known as 25143 Itokawa, and this is the first time that samples have been retrieved from the surface of any extraterrestrial body other than the Moon.

This particular asteroid was chosen because scientists suspected from spectroscopic similarities that asteroids of Itokawa's type — known as S-type because of their siliceous (stony) content — were the source of the vast majority of meteorites that end up on Earth, known as ordinary chondrites.

Even though S-type asteroids represent only a fraction of all the different types within the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter, the theory made sense. S-types are commonly found on the inner fringes of the belt, so scientists assumed that any chips blown off them would often hit Earth. However, no one had been able to verify the assumption because asteroids had previously only been studied by telescopes and passing spacecraft.

"Now we have a direct link, not conjecture," says Don Brownlee, an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle, who was not part of the study team.
Asteroid timeline

The scientists were also able to measure the effects of 'space weathering' — the process by which the surfaces of asteroids are altered by cosmic rays, the solar wind and micrometeoroids. These changes, along with the amounts of helium, neon and argon in the rock, can be used to determine how long an asteroid's surface has been exposed to space.

The result was surprising: according to a team led by Keisuke Nagao of the University of Tokyo, the dust collected from Itokawa had been exposed to this radiation for no more than eight million years. This relatively short period of space weathering indicates that the asteroid is eroding at the rate of several tens of centimetres every million years, thus exposing a fresh surface to be weathered.

"This is a quite unexpected result," says Alexander Krot, a meteorite expert at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu. "This asteroid's lifetime is quite short. In several hundred million years, it will just disappear."

Another important find is that early in their history the minerals in the dust grains collected from Itokawa have been heated enough to have metamorphosed. A team led by Tomoki Nakamura from Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, reports that particles recovered from the asteroid seem to have experienced long-term heating at about 800 °C.

Heat would have been supplied within the asteroid by the radioactive decay of aluminium-26, a short-lived isotope that was a primary source of heating in the first few million years of the Solar System. But a small asteroid such as Itokawa wouldn't have contained enough aluminium-26 to generate sufficient heat to metamorphose rock. "To reach 800 °C, an asteroid would need to be about 20 kilometres in diameter," Nakamura says.

This suggests that the present asteroid is a fragment of a larger body. "It must have been broken by an impact, and reassembled in its current form," he says.
Puzzling processes

But not all of the grains brought back to Earth show the same degree of heating. "This is a complicated body," Brownlee says, "some of which is more processed [by heating] and some less processed."

At the same time, notes Humberto Campins, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida, Orlando, the fact that the spacecraft was able to collect small grains from the surface indicates that they are being continually produced by some process, possibly seismic or from micrometeorite impacts. "That's also very interesting," he says, adding that is it good news for future asteroid-sampling missions, such as NASA's OSIRIS-REx, for which he is a member of the science team.

The mission's greatest success, however, could be seen as a technological one. Despite a litany of woes — ranging from Hayabusa being hit by a near-crippling solar flare shortly after launch to uncertainties about whether the sample container had properly sealed before the spacecraft lifted off for its return to Earth — the mission certainly produced results.

But the findings still present a puzzle. Although Itokawa has been shown to be a source of ordinary chondrites, the asteroid's mineralogical make-up isn't of the same type as that found in the most common chondrite meteorites, says Campins.

Most meteorites, he says, are H or L chondrites — indicating 'high' or 'low' iron content. Itokawa is LL, meaning it has a very low iron content — and LL chondrites are the least abundant of all the ordinary chondrites found on Earth. "The Itokawa mission confirms a bunch of things, and also confirms a puzzle," Campins says.

Itokawa Dust Particles: A Direct Link Between S-Type Asteroids and Ordinary Chondrites - T. Nakamura et al Oxygen Isotopic Compositions of Asteroidal Materials Returned from Itokawa by the Hayabusa Mission - H. Yurimoto et al Neutron Activation Analysis of a Particle Returned from Asteroid Itokawa - M. Ebihara et al Incipient Space Weathering Observed on the Surface of Itokawa Dust Particles - T. Noguchi et al Three-Dimensional Structure of Hayabusa Samples: Origin and Evolution of Itokawa Regolith - A. Tsuchiyama et al Irradiation History of Itokawa Regolith Material Deduced from Noble Gases in the Hayabusa Samples - K.Nagao et al
Japanese Asteroid Mission A Success
University of Central Florida | 2011 Aug 25

Extraterrestrial dust reveals asteroid's past and future
New Scientist | Maggie McKee | 2011 Aug 25

Asteroid sample nails meteorite source
Science News | Nadia Drake | 2011 Aug 25

Huge Asteroid Impact Formed "Rubble Pile" Space Rock
National Geographic | Ker Than | 2011 Aug 25

Mystery Solved: Earth's Meteorites Came From Stony Asteroids
Space.com | Charles Q. Choi | 2011 Aug 25

Re: Itokawa / Hayabusa

Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2011 8:25 pm
by neufer
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00003191/ wrote:
The Planetary Society Blog By Emily Lakdawalla: Sep. 20, 2011
Reading Itokawa's life history from microscopic samples

<<Last month, the first results from the analysis of the grains of asteroid dust returned by Hayabusa from asteroid Itokawa were published in Science. When Hayabusa's sample return capsule was first opened and found to be very clean-looking inside, I doubted that there could be enough material for laboratory analysis. JAXA announced later that they scraped about 1500 dust grains from the inside with a teflon spatula, and these likely came from Itokawa. They were tiny, most of them smaller than 10 microns across. They later retrieved 40 larger grains ranging in size from 30 to 180 microns by turning the sample canister over, holding it over a silica glass plate, and -- I am not kidding -- tapping it with a screwdriver. Such a tiny amount of material -- how could they possibly do any good science with these few bits of dust?

I needn't have worried. When I was at the Small Bodies Analysis Group meeting last month, I chatted with Mike Zolensky, who curates space dust at Johnson Space Center, and he told me that the teeny little grains amounted to quite a lot of material for modern laboratory techniques. And sure enough, just a couple of days later, a set of six papers came out in Science, each reporting a different type of analytical results.

The first paper provided a description of the mineral makeup of the grains, based on scanning electron microscopy and x-ray diffraction. They catalogued the 1534 grains from the Teflon spatula: 1087 were made up only of one type of mineral, while 447 were made of more than one. Of the single-mineral particles, most were the three very very common rock-forming minerals olivine (580), pyroxene (192), and feldspar (186). The rest were troilite, an iron sulfide (113), chromite, an iron chromium oxide (13), calcium phosphate (10), and iron-nickel metal grains (3). Of the multi-mineral particles, most were made of those common rock-forming minerals I mentioned earlier, but some were made of a mix of silicate minerals and potassium-bearing halite, which seems weird (halite, on Earth, is also known as salt).

Taken together, this catalogue makes the samples of Itokawa a perfect match to ordinary chondrite meteorites, so they confirmed that S-type asteroids like Itokawa are the origin of the most common type of asteroid that falls on Earth, ordinary chondrites. This conclusion was confirmed by other kinds of analyses reported in other Science papers, including oxygen isotope analysis, neutron activation analysis, The larger "tapped" particles are like miniature meteorites, made up of a variety of minerals that must have formed under a variety of conditions. With this mineralogical catalogue of the Itokawa particles, scientists were able to read the samples to tell the following story about Itokawa's history.

Once upon a time, an asteroid condensed from the solar system nebula. It condensed in a region of space where iron and the elements that like to be with iron had already condensed out, and grew to a size of more than 20 kilometers across. Like everything else in the solar system, some of its atoms were short-lived radioactive isotopes like aluminum-26. As these radioactive materials decayed, the interior of the asteroid heated up, reaching a peak temperature of about 800°C before beginning to cool again as the short-lived radioisotopes were depleted. The deep interior of the asteroid cooled slowly, at a rate of only about 1°C every 2000 years. This slow cooling annealed the asteroid's constituent grains -- atoms moved around and grains became interlocked.

Then there was a big impact that catastrophically broke up the asteroid, at every scale -- even its mineral grains were cracked from the shock of the impact. A small amount of its fragments -- a mixture of stuff from near its surface with stuff that had been in its deep interior -- coalesced into a rubble-pile asteroid. Over millions or billions of years, exposure to bombardment by micrometeorites and to energetic ions from the solar wind weathered the particles at the surface, causing nanometer-sized grains of iron to form in the ones that were exposed. The asteroid continued to be battered by impacts of various sizes, and the seismic shaking from these impacts made some grains rub against each other and tumble downhill into a local topographic low point, burying some. But most grains that were lofted off the surface by these impacts were lost completely, launched into space. In this way Itokawa is shrinking with time, losing tens of centimeters of material every million years. A little spacecraft launched from Earth, briefly touched down, and took away some dust particles and carried them back. In another few hundred million years, Itokawa will be gone.>>

Re: Itokawa / Hayabusa

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 8:36 am
by laura_abc
Hayabusa Landed on Itokawa Successfully :!:

http://www.universetoday.com/11131/haya ... cessfully/

Re: Itokawa / Hayabusa

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 12:07 pm
by neufer
laura_abc wrote:Hayabusa Landed on Itokawa Successfully :!:

http://www.universetoday.com/11131/haya ... cessfully/
And none to soon :!:

UT: Hayabusa 2 Mission Approved by Japan

Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2012 7:56 pm
by bystander
Hayabusa 2 Mission Approved by Japanese Government
Universe Today | Paul Scott Anderson | 2012 Jan 31
In 2010, the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa completed an exciting although nail-biting mission to the asteroid Itokawa, successfully returning samples to Earth after first reaching the asteroid in 2005; the mission almost failed, with the spacecraft plagued by technical problems. The canister containing the microscopic rock samples made a soft landing in Australia, the first time that samples from an asteroid had been brought back to Earth for study.

Now, the Japanese government has approved a follow-up mission, Hayabusa 2. This time the probe is scheduled to be launched in 2014 and rendezvous with the asteroid known as 1999 JU3 in mid-2018. Samples would again be taken and returned to Earth in late 2020.

1999 JU3 is approximately 914 metres (3,000 feet) in diameter, a little larger than Itokawa, and is roughly spherical in shape, whereas Itokawa was much more oblong.

As is common for any space agency, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is working with tight budgets and deadlines to make this next mission happen. There is a possibility of a back-up launch window in 2015, but if that deadline is also not met, the mission will have to wait another decade to launch.

One of the main problems with Hayabusa was the failure of the sampling mechanism during the “landing” (actually more of a brief contact with the surface with the sample capturing device) to retrieve the samples for delivery back to Earth. Only a small amount of material made it into the sample capsule, but which was fortunate and ultimately made the mission a limited success. The microscopic grains were confirmed to have primarily come from Itokawa itself and are still being studied today.

To avoid a repetition of the glitches experienced by Hayabusa, some fundamental changes needed to be made.

This next spacecraft will use an updated ion propulsion engine, the same propulsion system used by Hayabusa, as well as improved guidance and navigation systems, new antennas and a new altitude control system.

For Hayabusa 2′s sample-collecting activities, a slowly descending impactor will be used, detonating upon contact with the surface, instead of the high-speed projectile used by Hayabusa. Perhaps not quite as dramatic, but hopefully more likely to succeed. Like its predecessor, the main objective of the mission is to collect as much surface material as possible for delivery back home.

Hopefully Hayabusa 2 will not be hampered by the same problems as Hayabusa; if JAXA can achieve this, it will be exciting to have samples returned from a second asteroid as well, which can only help to further our understanding of the history and formation of the solar system, and by extrapolation, even other solar systems as well.

Hayabusa's asteroid-sampling mission, take two
New Scientist | Lisa Grossman | 2012 Jan 31

Asteroids: The New 'It Mission' for Space Exploration
University of Central Florida | 2012 Feb 01

Planetary Society:Hayabusa 2 is about to launch!

Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2014 9:35 pm
by MargaritaMc
Hayabusa 2 is about to launch!

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla

2014/12/02 16:54 UTC


Hayabusa 2's H-IIA rocket has just reached its launchpad! Japan's next asteroid sample return mission was supposed to launch this weekend, but weather has not been good at the Tanegashima launch site and it has been delayed four days already. The current launch date and time is December 3 at 04:22 UT (13:22 JST, or December 2 at 20:22, PT).
Live coverage at Spaceflight Now
Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Ready to Face New Challenges -Hayabusa2-


JAXA | 宇宙航空研究開発機構

Published on 26 Nov 2014

It has been four years since the Hayabusa’s dramatic return from space,bringing back the world’s first samples from an asteroid. To further clarify the mystery of the origin and evolution of human beings, the Hayabusa2 is leaving for space. This video explains the special features and significance of the Hayabusa2 mission in an easy and simple manner.
Margarita

Re: Planetary Society:Hayabusa 2 is about to launch!

Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2014 10:06 pm
by MargaritaMc
http://csirouniverseblog.com/2014/12/03 ... he-sequel/ has more info about the original Hayabusa, for those who, like me, were not aware of the drama at the time.
The return to Earth in June 2010 of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Hayabusa spacecraft over the South Australian desert signalled the triumphant end of one of the most drama filled space missions since Apollo 13.

The crippled spacecraft limped home on tiny thrusters, four years later than planned for its return to Earth and with JAXA scientists having no idea whether their probe had succeeded in collecting any samples from the asteroid’s boulder-strewn surface.

As with Apollo 13, the return to Earth came down to the abilities and inventiveness of the scientists and engineers who nursed the spacecraft home across billions of kilometres of space
. The final result was the successful retrieval of grain-sized pieces of asteroid material to Earth

JAXA: HAYABUSA2 Asteroid Explorer Mission Successfully Launc

Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2014 6:12 pm
by bystander
Follow Press Releases on the Hayabusa2 Mission: http://global.jaxa.jp/press/2014/

Re: Planetary Society:Hayabusa 2 is about to launch!

Posted: Fri May 25, 2018 4:57 pm
by neufer
http://www.hayabusa2.jaxa.jp/topics/mission_schedule_e/ wrote: .
Hayabusa2 mission schedule: provisional version (as of February 21, 2018).
.
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
<<The current schedule for Hayabusa2 is shown below. The dates here are all provisional as operation timings are very susceptible to change due to a wide range of factors, including our knowledge about Ryugu expanding as we approach the asteroid.
................................................................
Early June: Ion engine operation ends.

Early June: Start of asteroid approach. (at a distance of 2,500 km)

June 21 - July 5: Arrival at asteroid Ryugu (altitude 20 km).

End of July: Medium altitude observations of Ryugu #1 (altitude 5 km).

August: Decent to measure gravity of Ryugu (altitude 1 km).

September - October: Period for touchdown operation #1
  • (First landing to gather a sample.)
September - October: Period for rover deployment #1
(One or more MINERVA-II rovers and/or the MASCOT lander may be released to the asteroid surface at this time.)>>

Osaka: Particles Collected by Hayabusa Give Age of Itokawa

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2018 10:05 pm
by bystander
Particles Collected by Hayabusa Give Absolute Age of Asteroid Itokawa
Osaka University, Japan | 2018 Aug 27

Understanding the origin and time evolution of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) is an issue of scientific interest and practical importance because they are potentially hazardous to the Earth. However, when and how these NEAs were formed and what they suffered during their lifetime remain enigmas.

Japanese scientists, including those from Osaka University, closely examined particles collected from the asteroid Itokawa by the spacecraft Hayabusa, finding that the parent body of Itokawa was formed about 4.6 billion years ago when the solar system was born and that it was destroyed by a collision with another asteroid about 1.5 billion years ago. ...

It has been reported that the mineralogy and geochemistry of the Itokawa particles resemble those of LL (LL stands for Low (total) iron, Low metal) chondrites, which frequently fall to the Earth.

However, the shock ages of Itokawa particles obtained from this study (1.5 billion years ago) are different from previously reported shock ages of shocked LL chondrites (4.2 billion years ago). This shows that the asteroid Itokawa had a time evolution different from that of the parent body of LL chondrites. ...

Thermal and Impact Histories of 25143 Itokawa Recorded in Hayabusa Particles ~ K. Terada et al

Re: Osaka: Particles Collected by Hayabusa Give Age of Itokawa

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2018 2:33 am
by neufer
bystander wrote: Thu Aug 30, 2018 10:05 pm Particles Collected by Hayabusa Give Absolute Age of Asteroid Itokawa
Osaka University, Japan | 2018 Aug 27
Japanese scientists, including those from Osaka University, closely examined particles collected from the asteroid Itokawa by the spacecraft Hayabusa, finding that the parent body of Itokawa was formed about 4.6 billion years ago when the solar system was born and that it was destroyed by a collision with another asteroid about 1.5 billion years ago. ...

It has been reported that the mineralogy and geochemistry of the Itokawa particles resemble those of LL (LL stands for Low (total) iron, Low metal) chondrites, which frequently fall to the Earth. However, the shock ages of Itokawa particles obtained from this study (1.5 billion years ago) are different from previously reported shock ages of shocked LL chondrites (4.2 billion years ago). This shows that the asteroid Itokawa had a time evolution different from that of the parent body of LL chondrites. ...

Thermal and Impact Histories of 25143 Itokawa Recorded in Hayabusa Particles ~ K. Terada et al
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/407950.html wrote: What's the meaning of the phrase:
'When the sh*t hits the fan?'


'Messy and exciting consequences brought about
by a previously secret situation becoming public.'


<<This expression alludes to the unmissable effects of sh*t being thrown into an electric fan. It appears to have originated in the 1930s. I can't say better than 'appears' as the earliest citation of it that I can find is in the 1967 edition of Eric Partridge's A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English:

"Wait till the major hears that! Then the sh*t'll hit the fan!"

Partridge lists the phrase as Canadian, circa 1930, but as he gives no supporting evidence we have to go by the 1967 date, although it is undoubtedly earlier.

Other, more polite, forms of the phrase, involving eggs, pie, soup and 'stuff', can certainly be dated from the USA the 1940s; for example, Max Chennault's Up Sun, 1945: "Sounds like the stuff was about to hit the fan."

The Fresno Bee Republican, May 1948, reported on a psychiatrists' convention, under the heading See How Brain Boys Also Run Wild:

"However, once that opening point was settled, the psychiatrists entered wholly in the business of the convention, which culminated, of course, in the selection of officers for the coming year. And that, as the saying goes, was when the soup hit the fan." The other versions followed soon afterwards.>>