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Hayabusa Probe Arrives at Destination

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Sep 12, 2005 11:05 PM
from the we-dont-do-nearly-enough-probing dept.
Space Technology
david.given writes "The Japanese space probe Hayabusa has just arrived at its destination, the asteroid Itokawa, and is taking pictures. The largely autonomous ion-drive powered vehicle was launched in 2003 and was supposed to have arrived last year, but a solar flare damaged the solar panels causing a reduction in power. It will study the asteroid for two months before collecting a sample from the surface and departing for Earth, which it should reach in 2007. It's a pity that NASA's asteroid rover, which Hayabusa was going to drop off, got cancelled due to budgetry constraints..."
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  • So when it gets there... (Score:5, Funny)

    by millennial (830897) on Monday September 12 2005, @11:11PM (#13544116) Journal
    Will it use the magical firewheel of protection, or be followed by a hazy clone of itself that mimics its actions?
    /ryu hayabusa... ninja gaiden. ding.

  • Gosh, real science over in Japan (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ReformedExCon (897248) <reformed.excon@gmail.com> on Monday September 12 2005, @11:12PM (#13544123)
    I am impressed by the Japanese mission:

    HAYABUSA's mission: to bring back samples from an asteroid and investigate the mysteries of the birth of the solar system.

    And I am sufficiently unimpressed by NASA's inability to even piggyback a rover with this. There is so much science to do that doesn't have to do with rocketry, that doesn't have to do with sending people into space, that doesn't have to do with spending billions on a boondoggle space program that is more concerned with keeping certain government vendors in the money rather than actually getting real science done.

    Mars Rovers: Good NASA
    Space Shuttle: Bad NASA
    Hubble ST: Good NASA
    ISS: NASA can't even send people up there to rendezvous

    I'm sure someone will want to say "what about that big ol' comet we blasted with our satellite. Did we get any samples back? Did we get anything new except maybe a little more practice at aiming our missiles? Not really.

    Hayabusa looks like it's going to be headed back to Earth with samples. Real science. I just wish it were Americans at the leading edge of scientific space exploration.

    • Re:Gosh, real science over in Japan (Score:4, Interesting)

      by antifoidulus (807088) on Monday September 12 2005, @11:39PM (#13544269) Homepage Journal
      Hate to break it to you, but in terms of failure rate, the Japanese space program is so far ahead of NASA it isn't even funny, yeah this one was successful, but overall the Japanese space program has been an expensive disaster. They have sent probe after probe after probe only to have them destroyed, they struggle to get even a basic satellite in orbit.....
      NASA isn't perfect, but saying they are "behind" the Japanese space program is well, simply not true.
      • That probably isn't exactly fair to ISAS, which has merged with NASDA that was plagued with failure after failure with its H-I and II rockets. These institutions now form JAXA, instead.

        The ISAS's mu-series rocket has been fairly successful, except for a major failure of M-V rocket that carried ASTRO-E1 mission in 2000. So comparing NASA and ISAS is like apple-and-orange comparison that makes no sense, either.

        Hayabusa was launched by ISAS, FWIW.

    • Re:Gosh, real science over in Japan (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LnxAddct (679316) <sgk25@drexel.edu> on Monday September 12 2005, @11:42PM (#13544298) Homepage
      You sir are clueless about "that big ol' comet we blasted". you can learn just about everything you need to using spectroscopy, and we are examing the inner layers of the comet which required such an impact. Its one thing to bring back a small sample from the top and examine it, its another to evalute a comet as a larger piece and its interior. If you sent a rover to earth from some distant planet and only brought back a small sample, would it be right for them to assume that the whole world was ice, or water, or dirt, or filled with bacteria? Both missions will certainly tell us alot of things that we didn't know before, but NASA's mission is telling us a whole lot more about the composition and general structure. Japan's mission is a little more specific and narrow focused, which makes sense considering that space agencies typically know what others are working on (except for the chinese) so why duplicate work. One thing is for sure, if a comet is ever headed towards earth, NASA's mission brought us a whole lot closer to understanding how to neutralize the threat.

      Who said NASA'a space shuttle was bad? It is revolutionary, just expensive as hell and slightly ahead of its time, even more so then government projects like Arpanet were. As far as ISS goes, the only reason that thing is even in orbit is because of NASA. 6 space agencies claim to be apart of the project, but the only two that have ever done anything are the Russians and Americans. The Americans are also responsible for taking up just about every part of the station, the Russians took up 3. If NASA ever had trouble sending people up, it was simply because of red tape and senseless bureaucracy, the russians are a bit less worried about people dying. Everybody knocks NASA, but they are one of the few space agencies that does kickass things on a regular basis. Sure they could do something cool once and then never again and their saftey record could be perfect, but that isn't the point. Get your facts straight, the truth is that the majority of what we know about space is a as result of NASA. Of course the Russians deserve credit here too.
      Regards,
      Steve
    • It always all boils down to money. I don't know your age, but if you are over 50, then you may remember real money. They don't have it anymore, and yet, that's all they seem to talk about.

      I am less interested in the origins of the Universe, and more interested in mining the asteroids. It is very possible, that by mining the asteroids rather than the Earth, that our planet might be saved.

      There is the problem of gravitation, and the effect that might be had on the solar system by changing it's mass around. T
    • Yeah, and you know what they're going to do to those samples when they're returned?

      Run them through a spectroscope.
  • ..to get samples from any extra-terrestrial object, I think what is going to be most important out of this project is the ion-driven technology that propels the craft, as well as the re-entry capsule. Though it certianly might have been nice if they could have made the whole craft re-enterable; these things are far from cheap, and anything reusable goes a long way towards motivating people to supporting funding in NASA/JAXA.

  • Yes, but... (Score:3)

    by Stormwatch (703920) <rodrigogirao&hotmail,com> on Monday September 12 2005, @11:15PM (#13544140) Homepage
    ...did Hayabusa get his revenge? [classicgaming.com]
    • In 2005, a post mentioning Ninja Gaiden in a thread about something called "Hayabusa" is modded offtopic.

      The sense of geek culture is truly lost here. Or those of us who get it are just too old and too few.
  • From the post: "but a solar flare damaged the solar panels causing a reduction in power."

    And now that it's so very close to its target, we have another one [skyandtelescope.com] coming.
  • This is great for everyone. Thank you Japan, and keep the photos coming. Best of luck with the sample return.

    As an aside, to Japanese spacecraft have particular trouble with solar flares? Or just horrible luck? Didn't they have a Mars probe stagger past that planet but not make orbit for about the same reasons?

    • The fact that their probe can undergo damage and continue the mission is impressive all by itself.
    • s an aside, to Japanese spacecraft have particular trouble with solar flares? Or just horrible luck? Didn't they have a Mars probe stagger past that planet but not make orbit for about the same reasons?

      Wiki link on Radiation Hardening [wikipedia.org]

      Basically, it's not just japan that has the problem, it's everyone. Anything in earth orbit is partially protected by the earths magnetic field. The other thing is that you have to be in the path of the flare, this probe was just unlucky. The mars rovers and others wou

  • Seems odd. (Score:5, Funny)

    by bluesoul88 (609555) <bluesoul@nOSpam.thelegendofmax.com> on Monday September 12 2005, @11:46PM (#13544318) Homepage
    "A solar flare damaged the solar panels causing a reduction in power."

    Ah, powered by irony. Those Japanese are always on the cutting edge.

  • My tax refund is no budgetary constraint (Score:3, Funny)

    by craXORjack (726120) on Monday September 12 2005, @11:50PM (#13544344)
    It's a pity that NASA's asteroid rover, which Hayabusa was going to drop off, got cancelled due to budgetry constraints...

    By cancelling all these pork barrel projects the administration was able to give you a tax refund. I enjoyed my three hundred dollars. It paid for the gas for my huge honkin' SUV for a whole month. It would have been two months except that Dick and George's arab friends raised their prices. But at least all those refunds went to a good cause. If the democrats were still running things a lot of our disposable income would be going to cocaine farmers in South America. But we can rest assured that when the robed men that George Bush holds hands with collect our extra cash that they will do something good with it. I'll bet they have lots of charitable causes that they donate to. Yup, I hear those Saudi's give to lots of worthy organizations... So the next time you complain about not adding some expensive, experimental gadget to some japanese rocket just think for a second about where that money would come from and have a little sympathy for those poor millionaires who would have to cut back on single malt scotch and exotic asian hookers. And for what? So some scientists can drive a remote control car around on an asteroid. We don't need Science to tell us about the universe. Everything you need to know is in the GoOD Book. Want to know how the universe was created? Pick up a Bible and read. It's right there in the first chapter.

    • Oh come off it. In the current market, nobody has 'control' of prices -- they're set by the laws of supply and demand. Demand is huge right now mainly because the red Chinese economy is booming. Supply, meanwhile, can't be increased. The result is completely predictible to anybody who's taken high school economics: prices go up.

      When there's any blip in supply, as there was with the hurricane, supply actually drops and prices go up again.

      And, in fact, this is what you want -- if the prices were artifici
    • The Planetary Society

      NASA Cancels Rover on Joint Japan-US Asteroid Mission

      November 3, 2000

      NASA has canceled the development of a miniature rover, which would have been part of the U.S. contribution to a Japanese mission to an asteroid in September, 2005. The primary reasons for the cancellation were rising costs and weight.

      A Previous President.

  • stupid controller (Score:3, Funny)

    by austad (22163) on Tuesday September 13 2005, @12:04AM (#13544429) Homepage
    Actually, the probe would have been there much much sooner, but someone accidentally entered "up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, select, start" when they should have entered "up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, start".

    It's a common mistake. It's too bad it had to happen on the controls to this thing though.

    NASA has, however, licensed the control technology used on this probe. Unfortunately, they are unsure as to whether or not their current shuttle control systems have enough power to be able to take commands from the unit. Fortunately, when the engineers do something wrong, they will have the assurance of being able to grab the cord 1 foot up from the controls and smack it repeatedly into a cement basement floor with no damage.
  • That's one fast motorbike and a hell of a ramp.
  • It will study the asteroid for two months before collecting a sample from the surface and departing for Earth

    The original press release was edited by the Japanese Government, the original version read as follows:

    It will study the asteroid for two months before awaking Godzilla.
  • From the article:

    HAYABUSA will not only gather samples but also observe the asteroid with various scientific devices and measures. For that purpose, it is equipped with a Telescope Wide-View Cameras and Light Detection and Ranging, as well as with a Near Infrared Spectrometer. It will also employ a hopping robot, which can move around on the asteroid's surface.

    A hopping robot? Sounds suspiciously like Looney Tunes. The big question is "Did they complete the programming so that it can steal the Explosive

  • We can put a Hayabusa on an Itokawa, but we still can't cure the common cold.

     

  • Taking Pictures? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Wizzy Wig (618399) on Tuesday September 13 2005, @12:30PM (#13548851)
    "The Japanese space probe Hayabusa has just arrived at its destination, the asteroid Itokawa, and is taking pictures." Will the Japanese tourist stereotypes never end?
    • Yep, you've got a point. What's the hurry? We need to fix things inside the cave first.
      • Your statement includes the assumption that it's possible to fix things "inside the cave". That's quite a wild assumption.
    • I think you are missing out the point that a lot of research is being done and money being spent on all the points you stated. I think it is shortsighted to stop all pure science just because there are problems "at home". There will always be problems "at home".

      I wish humans would quit giving each other debilitating but preventable diseases. There isn't much that money can do to stop that. I'm not sure why humans should be wasting so much money curing a disease that people shouldn't be contracting.

      And b
      • Granted, corrupt government leads to national poverty. However, lack of resources or lack of control of resources also limits wealth generation, especially during the "nation building phase". This has a big bearing on national wealth. How a country uses the resulting wealth is of course important. At the turn of the 20th Century, Australia and Argentina both had similarly world-leading standards-of-living. This was from both mineral and agricultural production. One country has had stable government, the oth
    • "new chemical elements"

      There aren't any elements left. We've filled in the chart already. Game over on that one.

      There may be some compounds that we haven't seen, though.

      • There may be some compounds that we haven't seen, though.

        The chart is partially arbitrary and will never be "complete" (in the future there will be new lab created elements, though short-lived). Your sibling post was more accurate in saying that we're not likely (near impossible) to discover any "natural" elements beyond the ones on the periodic table.

        There may be some compounds that we haven't seen, though.

        "Some" compounds is an understatement. We pretty much will never run out of new compounds to di

      • Re:Asteroids full of life? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by lgw (121541) on Tuesday September 13 2005, @02:04AM (#13544898) Journal
        The GPP is a troll, but not entirely wrong. We didn't really know that dark matter existed until the recent COBE microwave data confirmed that theory for odd galactic rotation speeds, and we still aren't sure what dark matter really is. Not a new "chemical element" of course, but something weirder. Who knows what else is out there (not on nearby asteroids of course, but OUT there) - all we know is what we see through telescopes from our little backwater. Heck, there might even be new chemical elements, if there really is an "island of stability" past 120 or so (though I hear that hypothesis is losing credibility these days).

    • Re:Asteroids full of life? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mtaht (603670) * on Monday September 12 2005, @11:41PM (#13544282) Homepage
      Hayabusa includes the Minerva hopper [wikipedia.org] - gravity on asteroids is so slight that you can get around on springs - no rockets or NASA rovers required. That's the key - that's why planetary exploration makes so little sense - when you can get to an asteroid and mine it [blogspot.com] - and return for a small fraction of the delta-V required to get back from the moon, or Mars [nasa.gov].

    • Typical Slashdot Paranoid Illiteracy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2005, @11:54PM (#13544362)
      I think it's hilarious that slashdot is on the one hand a reliable bastion of mainstream science, pro-evolution, anti-intelligent-design, etc.

      While on the other hand, the readers subscribe to the most bizarre ideas. For example, the parent post (right now the only post at score +5), bemoans the dangers of Japanese space probes bringing back "other elements" from "the galaxies and universes".

      But this is only scratching the surface. You only need to browse a few days to find dozens of highly-moderated posts about secret Pentagon weather-control devices, [slashdot.org] diseases caused by internet telephonty and so on.

      It would be funny -- even hilarious -- except that the readers of slashdot are actually among the most well-read and technically-minded people in the world. So instead, I must say, woe to the people of Earth!

      • Re:Typical Slashdot Paranoid Illiteracy (Score:5, Funny)

        by Bushcat (615449) on Tuesday September 13 2005, @12:15AM (#13544486)
        right now the only post at score +5

        But I think he went for the "+5, sympathy" vote. If you met a post like that in the street, you'd smile encouragingly and pat it on the head, inwardly glad that all your own posts had grown up healthy.

      • It would be funny -- even hilarious -- except that the readers of slashdot are actually among the most well-read and technically-minded people in the world.

        Believe me, we're not. Unless well-read means several readings of Lord of the Rings and technically-minded means Unix users (of which a constantly larger percentage is MacOSX users, which, eh...).

        And this is not "+5, Funny" -- it's more like "1, Sad But True".
      • Hm. Maybe it's because Slashdot is a fluctuating, fluidic, chaotically growing-and-shrinking and coming-and-going cloud of individuals, and not a hivelike conscious collective about which such gross generalizations and stereotypical judgments can be rationally made! :)
        • We have many good theories for origins and formations of galaxies, but nothing more than guesses at the specifics of how the brain functions and develops at a neural level.

          The most stated comparison is that we know more about space than the deep sea, though it is questionable.

          When you say we have "no clue" that's a given considering the ~infinite complexity of science and information in any field; but compared to many other fields, space knowledge is well devloped and well off.
          • We know a lot more about how the brain functions and develops at a neural level than we do about the formation of galaxies, but it's a far more complex system than the formations of galaxies. We have gotten to the point where we know what the meanings are of the patterns of signals sent to the brain from the eyes. We know the grouse functions of most parts of the brain, and each of its cells but it's extremely complex.

            The problem is the brains pattern is important where only the rough shape really matt
        • Atoms compose elements. A material that is composed of only one type of atom is called an element. Atoms are measured by the number of protons make up their nucleus. This number is called its "atomic number". Hydrogen has 1 proton in its nucleus, Helium has 2, and the count goes up from there.

          Now, we have identified all elements from 1 proton-nuclei (Hydrogen) through 112 proton-nuclei (Ununbium).

          It is theoretically possible that there are other elements that exist in space that we haven't found yet. T
            • Mostly because they are created through heavy-element fusion (Ca and U in the case of Uub) and the resulting element decays into lower-atomic number elements in microseconds.

              So we would need to find some place hospitable for fusion (maybe the Sun) and full of heavy elements (maybe not the Sun).
            • Because the asteroids in our solar system are made of the same "star-stuff" that Earth is made from. In other words, the elements in our asteroids were made in the same star or stars as the elements in the Earth. So it's unlikely we'd find any elements in an asteroid that we couldn't find here on Earth. That's why.
    • http://outpostnine.com/editorials/teacher1.html [outpostnine.com]

      "So anyway, the whole "black men have big dicks" stereotype stretches far and wide, even to the nation's 12 year olds. Part of why I'm here is not just to kind of sort of help teach English, but to "broaden cultural perceptions". Break stereotypes, challenge preconcieved notions, all that jazz. That's good and all, but this is one stereotype I think I'm just gonna let slide.

      So anyway, I get asked "bigu dikku" A LOT. Every 2-3 days in fact, which is amazing cons

      • Actually, it's more amazing that the writer of the article can believe stereotypes like 'Japan is a country with few foreigners' even while working there! The Japanese belief that black guys have big dicks is just plain correct, but this whole 'woo, Japan, isolated empire where ancient tradition coexists with giant robots' thing is totally incomprehensible to me.

        As to why his students feel the need to mention it to him all the time, well, I think he might want to consider that it's not that they're fascina

    • Re:Grasping at straws... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Graymalkin (13732) * on Tuesday September 13 2005, @12:35AM (#13544562) Homepage
      There's lots of good reasons to study deep space objects like asteroids and comets. Some of these are purely scientific while others are far more practical. Finding the exact composition of an asteroid for instance helps tell us where in the solar system it formed. Knowing where it began existance and comparing that position to its current one gives us clues on how the solar system has evolved from its accretion disk state. Studying asteroids up close also lets us test our theories on planetary formation, if an asteroid of a particular class is expected to have a particular composition and indeed does it lends weight to that formation theory. It also provides ground truth for other forms of observation and measurement.

      From a practical standpoint it is highly beneficial to know what asteroids are made out of. They're prime targets for space mining ventures at some point. Unlike materials mined from the Moon or Mars there's very little surface gravity to fight to get the material from the asteroid back to Earth. Hence it would be far easier to grab raw silicon or some such off a NEA and return it to Earth than get it off the Moon.

      It also pays off to practice sending craft to rendevous with deep space objects. While current missions are exploratory, at some point they might be defensive. If we see an Earth crossing comet or asteroid in enough time there's a good chance we can alter its trajectory or outright destroy it (if its small enough) if we can successfully put spacecraft in striking distance of it. It is desirable to have a lot of people well versed in that sort of mission. It's also another area where knowing the composition of such objects is useful. Knowing what would be needed to destroy or deflect such an object is much easier when you know how it is going to behave. A rocky dense asteroid will act far differently than a loosely clumped dustball when hit with a nuclear blast.
    • What are we looking for in the asteroids? Are we looking for anything specific? Why are we looking for that?

      I don't know what the Japanese scientists are looking for, but these things usually end up opening a portal to hell, releasing a 10,000 year old demon, accidently causing space pirates to avoid intergalatic space police capture, angering a perverted race of aliens with rather large tentacles bent on invading earth, or just plain old waking up something on monster island.

      Don't worry... Some young girl

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