Japan shoots for a piece of an asteroid
Hayabusa sample-return mission nears critical stage
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8131678/
By James Oberg, NBC News space analyst // Special to MSNBC
Updated: 2:24 p.m. ET June 7, 2005
A celestial “smash-and-grab” space mission that could become the greatest triumph in the history of the Japanese space program is entering its most challenging stage in deep space.
Together with NASA's comet-crashing Deep Impact mission and the European Rosetta spacecraft, Japan's Hayabusa probe is helping inaugurate a new era of interplanetary exploration: the physical examination of the surfaces of small bodies such as comets and asteroids.
The Hayabusa probe is slowly closing in on a distant asteroid named Itokawa. Within a few months, after surveying the asteroid thoroughly from a safe distance, Hayabusa will swoop down to its surface and grab samples of the dirt for return to Earth, like a spacefaring bird of prey. In fact, the spacecraft's name comes from the Japanese word for "peregrine falcon."
Already closer to the asteroid than the distance between Earth and its moon, Hayabusa is approaching at a relative speed of 225 mph (100 meters per second) and is firing its gentle but exceedingly persistent engine to further slow its speed.
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