Japan's Hayabusa2 Spacecraft Reaches 'Spinning-Top' Space Rock Ryugu (space.com) 43
Zorro shares a report from Space.com: The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 has successfully rendezvoused with Ryugu, beginning an 18-month stay at the diamond-shaped asteroid. Launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, in 2014, the probe will poke, prod and even impact the asteroid, deploying a small lander and three rovers. It will then blast an artificial crater to analyze material below the asteroid's surface. After that, the probe will head back to Earth, arriving near the end of 2020 with samples in tow.
Hayabusa2 automatically fired its thrusters this morning (June 27) at 9:35 a.m. local Japanese time (8:45 p.m. on June 26 EDT, or 1245 GMT), bringing the probe within a constant 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the asteroid, according to a statement from JAXA. The Hayabusa2 team will have to select the best place for the probe's lander and rovers based on the space rock's spinning-top-like shape and its rotation; the 3,000-foot-wide (900 meters) asteroid rotates perpendicular to its orbit, completing a full rotation every 7.5 hours.
Hayabusa2 automatically fired its thrusters this morning (June 27) at 9:35 a.m. local Japanese time (8:45 p.m. on June 26 EDT, or 1245 GMT), bringing the probe within a constant 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the asteroid, according to a statement from JAXA. The Hayabusa2 team will have to select the best place for the probe's lander and rovers based on the space rock's spinning-top-like shape and its rotation; the 3,000-foot-wide (900 meters) asteroid rotates perpendicular to its orbit, completing a full rotation every 7.5 hours.
A few relevant comments (Score:2, Interesting)
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I, on the other hand, am hoping that all of the Hayabusa researchers wear that same Hawaiian shirt at the press conference. Japan does science, and it doesn't give a fsck what SJWs think about a subject they know nothing about.
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Relevant how, exactly?
Yes, space exploration is hard. A few years ago we even managed to kill the whole crew of a shuttle mission. And few years before that we killed the whole crew of another shuttle mission.
Nobody has a perfect record.
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Re:A few relevant comments (Score:5, Insightful)
A few years ago, a Japanese probe missed Venus [space.com], an however easier target...
What about the Mars orbiter that mixed up metric/imperial and thrust itself into the planet instead of going around it? How amateur was that?
(and what sort of country still uses imperial units in the 21st century?)
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(and what sort of country still uses imperial units in the 21st century?)
Hint: a country more and more secluded, thanks to harsh immigration measures, tougher tariffs and more arrogant behavior.
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What about the Mars orbiter that mixed up metric/imperial and thrust itself into the planet instead of going around it? How amateur was that?
What people don't realize about that particular fusterclck is that it was not caused by someone making a gross error in converting between units. But because science operates in SI while the military contractors who built the probe work in Imperial, months of high-precision conversions back and forth between systems, in software, caused an accumulation of tiny roundoff errors to add up to aerobraking into the wrong part of the Martian atmosphere and loss of the craft.
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What people don't realize about that particular fusterclck is that it was not caused by someone making a gross error in converting between units. But because science operates in SI while the military contractors who built the probe work in Imperial,
The gross error was in converting between units at all. The original question was valid. What kind of monkeys use anything but metric for working on spacecraft?
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Whoa, that racist comment just came out of nowhere! Why'd you have to bring race into it?
Only you brought race into it.
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...and what sort of country still uses imperial units in the 21st century?
That would be the only country to possess resusable rockets in the 21st Century.
What were you saying? ;)
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If you watch any SpaceX webcast, they give the speed and altitude in kilometers per second / kilometers only. Never seen them even make casual reference to an imperial unit.
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Mars Climate Orbiter [wikipedia.org] was not lost because of a metric/imperical mix-up as the press likes to portray it. It was lost because one lazy person didn't write down the units on a printout of numbers, and another lazy person just assumed what the units were supposed to be instead of picking up the phone and verifying. MCO would've been lost all the same if the numbers had
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(and what sort of country still uses imperial units in the 21st century?)
One whose citizens no longer count on their fingers.
Don't underestimate the difficulty of this. (Score:1)
Landing on something that small, in the middle of nowhere, is quite an amazing feat. Because it is so hard to miss, in terms of velocities. Bringing *back* material is just damn amazing.
Yes, those mars landers had great landing procedures. But this here is far more fascinating and alien to me.
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It's not that hard to hit. But you don't want to hit it. What looks to be hard is keeping your lander and rovers "landed" on a small rock with virtually no gravity and still having them do anything useful.
Returning a sample probably isn't so hard, but how does one extract a sample without having the sample and sampling device drift off in opposite directions?
days ago (Score:4, Interesting)
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SpaceX (Score:2)
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While not uncommon, It's not the hypocrisy of those who hold those views that is the problem.
Saying we need to achieve some sort of perfect paradise on Earth before we can spend resources on anything else that advances human knowledge is simply saying we can never again advance human knowledge.
What kind of world does that logically lead to?
Asteroid samples. Mmm... (Score:2)
...with samples in tow
I wonder how long it'll be before sushi dusted with powdered asteroid becomes popular in Japan.
Space survival (Score:1)
life force (Score:2)