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Hayabusa Probe Arrives at Destination
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..."
Hayabusa includes the Minerva hopper - 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 - and return for a small fraction of the delta-V required to get back from the moon, or Mars.
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
"A solar flare damaged the solar panels causing a reduction in power."
Ah, powered by irony. Those Japanese are always on the cutting edge.
TLoM: Nerds + DDR + Rednecks for the win!
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, 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!