*** JAXA MAIL SERVICE ***
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hayabusa's Practice Descent (Rehearsal) on November 4th

November 6, 2005
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Hayabusa currently hovering around a near Earth asteroid Itokawa
commenced its descent at 19:17 GMT on November 3rd commanded from the
ground, when the altitude to the surface was about 3.5 km. It took an
aim at calibrating its proximity laser range finders, visibility
calibration and image processing of a target marker as well as
deploying a hopping robot MINERVA.

Down to about 700 meters in attitude, both attitude and trajectory
control had been performed via Hayabusa's proprietary autonomous
guidance and navigation capability as planned. However, the onboard
navigation computer detected anomalous information that did not
satisfy the requirement, the abort command was transmitted from the
ground at 03:30 GMT on November 4th. The subsequent events were all
canceled and the spacecraft fired its chemical engines and started
ascent.

When the operation ended from JAXA's Usuda station, the radio
communication to the spacecraft, the attitude control were all in
order and the instruments aboard were all functioning normally.
Despite the interruption, the project team thinks that it obtained
very important information through this practice descent flight, and
that this practice does make the strategy stiffer.

The project intends to perform another practice descent again. As of
today, the rehearsal schedule together with those for two
touching-down and sampling have not been decided yet. What caused the
interruption and how it is coped with are presently under
investigation and the details will be released after it has been
identified.

This page URL:

http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2005/11/20051106_hayabusa_e.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Publisher : Public Affairs Department
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Marunouchi Kitaguchi Building,
1-6-5, Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-8260
Japan
TEL:+81-3-6266-6400

JAXA WEB SITE :
http://www.jaxa.jp/index_e.html