MUSES-C Launched

Anonymous Coward writes "If all goes well, Japans MUSES-C asteroid probe will be bringing back samples from an asteroid in less than five years. Launched friday afternoon at 1:29 pm (local time) the probe should reach its target in June of 2005. The MUSES-C probe will collect surface samples of asteroid 1998SF36 totaling 1 gram, including sand and stone fragments, two years later before returning to the Earth in June 2007, researchers said."

Comments

Re:How will they retrieve the samples?

[molo]

FYI, old spy satellites used to drop rolls of film. I'm not sure about the mechanism though.

-molo

Re:How will they retrieve the samples?

[robslimo]

Still no complete answer, but I found this link:

http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc011698.html

Excerpt: Muses-C spacecraft will also fire explosive charges into the asteroid, collect the samples that are ejected from the impacts, and return the samples to Earth in a capsule for
laboratory analysis

and this:

http://www.isas.ac.jp/e/enterp/science/lunapla.h tm l

In this mission, the spacecraft will land on the asteroid surface, sample the surface rocks/soils and encapsulate them into a container. We will recover the samples carried by the entry capsule which will provide us with many findings of primitive bodies in the solar system.

-robSlimo

Re:1 gram?

[Anonymous Coward]

The probe is going into orbit around the sun so I bet when it comes back it will be moving far too fast to get into a low earth orbit where it could be grabbed by a spacecraft. You could put a big rocket on it to slow it down ($$$) or just let it rip into the atmosphere for free.