msnbc.com (Oberg): The real promise of Japan's asteroid mission
Even if it fails to bring back sample, its innovation should inspire
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10400707/

COMMENTARY
By James Oberg
NBC News space analyst
Special to MSNBC
Updated: 7:00 p.m. ET Dec. 9, 2005

Somewhere beyond the far side of the Sun, a battered Japanese space probe is struggling to make its critical condition clear to controllers back on Earth so they can diagnose the latest problems, develop another set of "work-around" procedures and implement them by remote control. The project’s goal, to return from a years-long interplanetary odyssey with samples from an asteroid, has been teetering on the edge of failure for most of the trip, but the Japanese control team has always been able to work something out before.

Even if that goal does slip through the team’s fingers, however, the enormously innovative and resilient mission promises to deliver perhaps an even more important cargo back to Earth: a renewed interest in far-out high-risk imaginative space technology demonstrations.