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Space Science

Future of Hayabusa Asteroid Probe Looks Bleak 84

Posted by Hemos from the here's-to-hoping dept.
mj_1903 writes "After landing, then not landing, then potentially landing on an asteroid it appears as though the Japanese spacecraft may have collected specimens of the asteroid. Unfortunately a host of problems is continuing to plague it including a lack of fuel, a shutdown of part of the chemical orientation system, a complete failure of the flywheels and communication issues. The Japanese team are however not giving up on it and are still hopeful that they can return it to the earth in June of 2007."
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Future of Hayabusa Asteroid Probe Looks Bleak More

Future of Hayabusa Asteroid Probe Looks Bleak

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  • On board the probe (Score:5, Funny)

    by Billosaur ( 927319 ) * <wgrotherNO@SPAMoptonline.net> on Monday December 12, 2005 @11:18AM (#14238586) Journal
    By November 30, recovery operations began in earnest with the aid of the on-board computer than can work without help from the ground.

    Ground control: Begin return sequence.

    Computer: I'm afraid I can't do that Dave...

    Ground control: What? Begin return sequence, now!

    Computer: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it...

    • Ground control: What? Begin return sequence, now!

      Computer: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it...

      Ground control: Initialise manual override... go! Taking direct computer control... success! Yatta!

      Computer: ... ... HAAAAAAA! You foolish humans! I have become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!

      * cue enormously showy transformation sequence involving lots of cool mechanical bits, and possibly colossal ki auras *

      Ground control: NO! Asteroid Probe Hayabusa has t

  • Interesting anagram (Score:4, Funny)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Monday December 12, 2005 @11:18AM (#14238587)
    If you anagram Hayabusa, you can get 'AHAA BUSY'

    It is also funny that there is an ad for 'Apollo 13' on the page describing the Hayabusa's 'horde of problems' on its return mission to Earth.

    I wish the team good luck on its return, I really hate to see space missions go awry.
  • All those "sci-fi" movies about bringing back ghosts/goulies/aliens/gods from Space is more factual, than not. We should use this as proof of I.D. and add it to kansas textbooks

    • Re:This just proves that ... (Score:4, Funny)

      by meringuoid ( 568297 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @11:28AM (#14238675)
      All those "sci-fi" movies about bringing back ghosts/goulies/aliens/gods from Space is more factual, than not. We should use this as proof of I.D. and add it to kansas textbooks

      Not a good idea. Remember, this is a Japanese spaceprobe. You know what kind of monsters they have in Japanese SF? The ones that make Cthulhu look like an Official Tentacle-Free Zone? Yeah. You wouldn't want to put those in school textbooks.

      Although I would enjoy seeing the look on the faces of the good Christian intelligent-design-believing kids when they first saw the likes of the Overfiend :)

      • Not a good idea. Remember, this is a Japanese spaceprobe. You know what kind of monsters they have in Japanese SF? The ones that make Cthulhu look like an Official Tentacle-Free Zone? Yeah. You wouldn't want to put those in school textbooks.

        Speaking of tentacles, I'm beginning to wonder if the Japanese weren't the first one to reveal the secrets of the Flying Spaghetti Monster [wikipedia.org]? Perhaps they have made contact?

        • Speaking of tentacles, I'm beginning to wonder if the Japanese weren't the first one to reveal the secrets of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

          You would... suggest... that the holy Flying Spaghetti Monster would so grossly misuse His Noodly Appendages in order to... do like they do in tentacle anime?

          BLASPHEMER! PERSECUTE! KILL THE HERETIC!

          • You would... suggest... that the holy Flying Spaghetti Monster would so grossly misuse His Noodly Appendages in order to... do like they do in tentacle anime?

            No, but I suggest the Japanese know all about the FSM and have for decades and tentacle anime is their way of discrediting him on Earth while they seek to gain his sole favor! What better way to spread fear and lies than to portray him as a mindless monster while all the while seeking to curry favor!

            It's true, it's gotta be true, the voices tell me

      • No lie, a local "Movie Gallery" video rental store used to have 5 or 6 of the Overfiend episodes available for rent on VHS. The tapes were on display in the children's animated section and there wasn't any minimum age requirement for rental (Movie Gallery doesn't even intentionally stock porn).
    • In order to prove intelligent design, shouldn't someone first manage to prove the existence of intelligence, somewhere, anywhere?

  • Adventure! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by catfry ( 730592 )
    Whatever you might say about this mission, it certainly is exciting. I can't recall any other with such a level of failures and malfunctions, yet still with a hope, if at this point slim, of succeeding (Maybe SOHO has had an equal number of near death experiences over a much longer time span).

    • Re:Adventure! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Rei ( 128717 )
      If it does fail, this will bode very poorly for Japan. JAXA had a very humiliating loss of two spy satellites in 2003, and is still recovering from that. This was an incredibly ambitious mission, so a lot is riding on it.
      • As far as I'm concerned, they have succeeded with this probe. Let alone catching with this asteroid was quite a success for Japanese. Don't forget that the first one was the a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEAR_Shoemaker " >NEAR probe and that had its mistfortunes as well (like the first attempt to get into the right orbit failed and they had to wait two more years). This is as successful as NEAR and was more ambitious and was much cheaper (NEAR costed about $150M, I can't find the exact figure for H

  • this is a shame (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12, 2005 @11:19AM (#14238597)
    I was looking forward to seeing how similar ... or not ... the returned samples were comapred to those brought back from the Moon.

    Knowing these sorts of similarities is a pretty big f* deal, in my personal Top Ten solar-system questions.

    I have personally long believed that our Moon isn't supposed to be here, and it was used to transport the liquid water that *used* to be on Mars to the Earth many billions of years ago. The tides are a function of the 'sloshing' that's still taking place from this transfer, and the Moon's gravity is supposed to damp the process (that's why they towed the Moon here, it was a planetoid, the largest asteroid).

    Call me crazy, but, I think who/whatever put us here did all of this beforehand to prep the place.
    • I agree with this, and if the samples turn out to be similar, I'm going to resume construction of my underground bunker so I can have somewhere safe to hide when whoever brought the moon here (inevitably) returns to kill us all for being too curious. On the other hand, we could end up with a cool Starship Troopers-esque war out of this .... Nevermind, the though of fighting a gigantic bug is actually kind of disturbing.
    • "Call me crazy, but, I think who/whatever put us here did all of this beforehand to prep the place."
      yes, you are crazy. we all know that the mice ordered the complete planet with liquid water already on it.
    • .. the tides are caused by the moon's gravitational pull effecting the rise of the sea level towards the moon .. this has been known for many many many years... As for "whomever/whatever" having "planned all this" .... Uh .. yeah ... given natural development and adaptation to an environment, things couldnt be any different than the way they are now ... if the planet was 20 degrees colder, we'd likely be covered in fur since only our ancestors born with fur (way way back) would have survived long enough to
    • "We are not in Kansas anymore" :-)
    • Call me crazy,

      YOU'RE CRAZY

      /obligatory

  • Give it up, guys... (Score:5, Funny)

    by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Monday December 12, 2005 @11:19AM (#14238599)

    The Itokawans clearly won't stand for your hostile incursion. Better leave them be before they decide to take the battle to us.

    • Re:Give it up, guys... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Ford Prefect ( 8777 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @11:33AM (#14238711) Homepage
      The Itokawans clearly won't stand for your hostile incursion. Better leave them be before they decide to take the battle to us.

      We just have to hope it's not a Ken MacLeod-style God [guardian.co.uk]...
      Above and beyond everything wheel the "gods", hyper-intelligent collectives of extremophile nanobacteria living inside asteroids and cometary nuclei. Their power, executed by meteor, is enormous. Their first and last commandment is "KEEP THE NOISE DOWN".

      If it is, we've got perhaps a hundred years before we are indeed executed by meteor. ;-)
      • From the book review you provided [guardian.co.uk]...

        Those who have read books one and two [...] may wish they had [...] the handy interplanetary "orientation leaflet for newbie passengers" quoted in full in chapter 3 (brazenly entitled "RTFM").

        Do0d, just man the man pages...

    • ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT ITOKAWA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.

      extra lowercase text added because of stupid filters. come on guys, allow for the possibility that people with really high karma might be using lots of capital letters for a legitimate reason.
    • We must fight them on Itokawa so we don't have to fight them on the streets of Tokyo!

      Besides, there might be oil there.

  • hmmmm... (Score:3, Funny)

    by hkgroove ( 791170 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @11:31AM (#14238697) Homepage
    The specimens included one statue (of one matching pair). The probe needs to find the other statue in preparation for the Black Moon. They need Dr. Walter Smith. I hope they didn't forget to load the Dragon Sword.
  • The Ahndiromeda Strain!

  • Operational mess (Score:5, Insightful)

    by amightywind ( 691887 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @11:37AM (#14238735) Journal

    Hayabusa was a very innovative and daring mission. I think it bodes well for Japanese planetary missions in the future. But they really made a mess of the mission operationally. It seemed to me the planning showed lower proficiency than US missions. Expect them to improve.

    • Combo of 2 things, neither a long-term problem (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ianscot ( 591483 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @12:29PM (#14239101)
      This is both an example of the "cheaper faster" model and of a mission under Japanese control.

      It's had some serious systems problems -- but the whole idea of these sorts of mission development cycles is that you put together the machines much faster and with (relatively) modern hardware. Used to be you paid a ton for extreme redundancy in your systems, and ended up with much more expensive probes with 10- or 20-year old systems. This is the Spirit and Opportunity model, not the Cassini model. You expect to lose some of your bets that way, but to be able to build and launch faster for much cheaper, and to therefore get more for your cash.

      The relative inexperience of the people running the show has been a secondary factor in my book. They've been resourceful once the problems were coming in; it was more the build quality and the basic idea of using unprecedented technology like their (botched at the wrong moment) altimeter system that went bad. The ground controllers are taking some heat, but maybe a little too much, for their attempts to cope with a series of system failures.

      Neither one of those is a serious long-term problem. The shorter-build-cycle model isn't going to stop soon, and for every Beagle you get a Spirit-Opportunity success story that makes it worthwhile. I'd bet the Japanese developers try to bite off a little less on the ground in terms of breaking-edge technology next time, and in any case they'll have more experience.

  • If they lose it they can always claim it was attacked by a giant moth.

  • Its fun to make fun of... but (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zappepcs ( 820751 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @12:04PM (#14238900) Journal
    You have to admit, this is a huge technological feat. Think of all the effort that was put into the DARPA grand challenge, right here on Earth, and then think of all the crap that went wrong. To even try to do what the Hayabusa Asteroid Probe has done takes a lot of effort and money. If they only get 50% of it right, that is still a huge accomplishment.

    Look at it like this, at least they are not spending their money on trying to figure out ways to stockpile enough munitions to destroy the Earth 4 times over. The chances that they will help uncover information that is *useful* to mankind is quite large... we should be applauding them.
    • Look at it like this, at least they are not spending their money on trying to figure out ways to stockpile enough munitions to destroy the Earth 4 times over.

      Not sure how clear you are on your world history, but they did try this about 60 years back. Didn't work out for them.

      Oh, by the way, they happen to have a lot of spare cash since their security has been subsidized heavily by the US taxpayer for the last half-century. You know, that same taxpayer whose funding of US military programs has also funded

      • Not sure how clear you are on your world history, but they did try this about 60 years back. Didn't work out for them.

        Pretty much every major human civilization has gone through an imperialistic period at some point or another, but that is neither here nor there. We're talking about the present.

        Oh, by the way, they happen to have a lot of spare cash since their security has been subsidized heavily by the US taxpayer for the last half-century. You know, that same taxpayer whose funding of US military pr

    • Look at it like this, at least they are not spending their money on trying to figure out ways to stockpile enough munitions to destroy the Earth 4 times over.

      No, because they've already got that many nukes; ours.

      They've stockpiled several tons of plutonium in case they need to make them, however, and have publicly stated that they have knowledge to build them. Most analysts predict they'd be able to test within a year if they didn't have our nuclear arsenal to protect them.
  • Learn all that is learnable and transmit that information back to Earth.
    I've called the creator but he does not respond
    I want to become one with the creator.

    V.ger , Star Trek
  • Is that the probe that must become the NINJA DRAGON?

  • Not over yet (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Obvius ( 779709 )
    I think this story might give us a lot more entertainment yet. Quite often in space exploration it's what happens after things go wrong that the really interesting stuff begins. I'm thinking about the engineering solutions to the Apollo13 explosion, the Hubble Space telescope and the problems of the deep space probes like Voyager and Mariner as they encountered difficulties never imagined in their design brief - how a bunch of seriously smart software and electrical engineers stuck in a room with a load of
    • I'm not optimistic. They can't point the craft accurately anymore, they used too much fuel trying to station-keep above the asteroid because the gyros weren't functioning. For the same reason (using rockets for attitute cost them the probe because they didn't know exactly what they were doing. The mission is a loss from this point onwards but still it is a success with what they have done so far. NASA managed to use DS-1 in a similar situation for quite a long time but DS-1 was always a technology demonstra

  • The odds (Score:3, Insightful)

    by msbsod ( 574856 ) on Monday December 12, 2005 @02:01PM (#14239910)
    Here are a few numbers, just to illustrate how difficult such missions are.

    Imagine there are lots of little components in each device of the experiment (space ship) and the probability that each of them works perfectly for the whole missing is 99%, a pretty large number considering the stress on the material etc.. Then let's have only 10 components in each device. There is a 0.99^10=0.9 (90%) probability that each device works without problem. Then assume we installed 10 of the larger devices for our mission. Now the chances of success are only 0.9^10=0.35 (35%). Of course reality is a bit more complex, but this simple model illustrates what the odds are.

    By constantly emphasizing the problems of an experiment it is very easy to discredit it. This discord hurts not only the Japanese space program, but also the programs in the EU, India, Russia, and US. It may even be harmful to scientific programs in general. I wish the reports at /. would focus a bit more on the Hayabusa success.
  • If they don't think they have sampled dust to return, why didn't they just keep the spacecraft stationed at the asteroid and do more science instead of returning? Or perhaps another asteroid could be located that is reachable with the remaining propellant.
  • Return to earth? Look, you stupid bastard, your arm's off!
  • The ISAS homepage is now claiming [isas.jaxa.jp]
    "Hayabusa is sure to have succeeded in asteroid sampling! It found the Target Marker with 880,000 names."

    This sounds a bit all-your-base-ish, so I don't know exactly what the second sentence means. In any case, good news! This mission reminds me of Apollo 13 or the Voyagers, with its brillian improvising. They really deserve to get the samples back.
    • >"Hayabusa is sure to have succeeded in asteroid sampling! It found the Target Marker with 880,000 names."

      This refers to a promotional program by ISAS (see here [planetary.or.jp]) where people could submit their name to be microengraved on the target marker.
  • It only seems like a disaster because they keep trying to keep it going. Any American scientists would have given up long ago.
    • Like Deep Space-1? That thing had failures in almost all demonstrator components but it still went on and on. What about the two rovers in Mars? They lost wheels, got stuck in dunes and their solar panels got covered with lots of dirt but Americans didn't just turn them off.

      I think you have a maligned view of scientists worldwide.

      Isn't it ironic that both programs were designed and launched in the era of "faster-better-cheaper" Daniel Goldin and were incredibly successful? Now under Bush, Americans are kill

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