Hayabusa 2 Asteroid Probe Postponed By Weather Until Early December

As reported by The Register, Japan's Hayabusa 2 mission to mine (or at least sample) an asteroid, which was to have been launched Saturday, has been delayed by weather, until a time no earlier than Monday, Dec. 1st (and from JAXA's web site, it appears that Dec. 3rd is the current target): If all goes to plan, the space probe will lift off next month and fly out to asteroid 1999JU3 by mid-2018 using ion engines. The craft will orbit the rock before dropping a bomb onto the surface. The resulting blast should leave a hole [in] the asteroid. The probe will then land and dig around in the rubble for material from below the surface using a "sampler horn". The probe will then take off again and head for home carrying its booty, and is due to return in 2020 or slightly later.

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[ls671]

Not a very friendly approach anyway if you ask me. I hope no species get the same idea with planet Earth as target for their research.

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[Dutch Gun]

Are there now politically correct and non-politically correct ways to take samples of asteroids? Apparently so.

The word "bomb" is probably not the best choice, though. It might be better to describe it as "blasting" rather than "bombing". The technical differences are possibly minor in this case, but the semantic differences are significant.

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[tehcyder]

Are there now politically correct and non-politically correct ways to take samples of asteroids?

What's political correctness got to do with it? If the asteroid belongs to an advanced alien civilisation, they might take it as a declaration of war, and vapourise the Earth with an anti-matter bomb. Or something.

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[Buck Feta]

Not a very friendly approach anyway if you ask me. I hope no species get the same idea with planet Earth as target for their research.

Yes, I hope nobody ever drops a bomb on the Japanese in retaliation for something.

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[quenda]

Do you drop a bomb in zero gravity?

You need a smart bomb. A _very_ smart bomb. The Japanese have developed Bomb #20.

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[4444444]

Take off all Zig !

Forget it

[Kvathe]

A 4-day delay on a 6-year mission? Not even worth it anymore, just scrap the thing. Asteroids will be old news 4 days after the original return date.

nice incremental refinement of the mission

[Trepidity]

The first Hayabusa [wikipedia.org] mission, also by the Japanese space agency, successfully returned a small amount of material taken from the surface of a comet. Blasting to extract some more material seems likely to add additional scientific data, while building on technology and a mission profile that has already been successfully used once.

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[Trepidity]

Whoops, I mis-typed: of course, it was from the surface of an asteroid, not comet. Same as with this mission.

There has actually been one sample-return mission to a comet, NASA's Stardust [wikipedia.org], but it didn't land on it.

TIE Bomber?

[spiritplumber]

So you could call it an ion-engine bomber? (And now I'm off to try to recreate this mission in KSP).

Best of luck

[hcs_$reboot]

At least more luck than Akatsuki, missed Venus orbit [wikipedia.org], and Nozomi, missed Mars orbit. [wikipedia.org]

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[Anonymous Coward]

At least Akatsuki will get a second try at Vevus capture.