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Hayabusa Probe Lands on Asteroid After All
pin_gween writes "Reuters.UK is reporting the the Hayabusa space probe successfully landed on the asteroid Itokawa. JAXA officials are trying to determine whether to attempt another landing. The probe has had a series of glitches, and failed to drop a set of instruments upon landing."
...apparently did not deploy its sampling tools, which was kind of the point of the mission. Still, it's a pretty major feat and the article says they might try again, to see if they can get their samples. And check out this great image of the asteroid with the probe's shadow.
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It can be done in one, move the far A value in JAXA to the front to spell AJAX
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And after all those millions of dollars into the probe... Houston! The asteroid is made of cheese! :P
For those of you who don't rent movies with subtitles: The Zatoichi movie series is about a blind swordsman who lived in Medieval Japan. Sort of Kurosawa light. I think the original post is trying to say that even though the probe was blind, sort of, it still managed to land. For those who don't know who Kurosawa is ... oh nevermind, go download a reality program about people eating lizards on a desert island.
The first successful asteroid landing attempt was done on Eros by the NEAR spacecraft :
See Here.
The amazing thing is that NEAR was not even designed to land : they mission controllers did it because NEAR was running out of fuel and would be turned off anyway so they decided to chance it. They put it down (after a few bounces on the surface too) and turned it off. One day they might try to turn it on again.
The point is, that it is not impossible to do it. Indeed, the physics is pretty simple. There is no "hitting a fast moving target" problem : the probe is already in orbit and moving pretty slowly relative to the asteroid. The problem is systems engineering : all the problems that you see from the probe is not because some tools malfunctioned outright etc, it is poor integration of systems. Just look at the communications downlink blackout during the landing rehearsal that results in the loss of the MINERVA miniprobe. I mean, come on, you can PREDICT when those blackouts occur!
Finally, your rant about "Japanese cheating to save face" is just pure flamebait.
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To land on an asteroid you have to speed up your space probe to a speed that's within a few FPS (Feet Per Second) of your target asteroid, as well as get your probe going in the same direction. Can't meet your 1000 MPH asteroid while you travel at 100 MPH. That's like hitting a wall at 900 MPH.
Now that's not so hard to do that we'd never consider doing it (in fact we[humans] have done it.)
Here's the catch. Once your spacecraft/probe is flying at the same speed and in the same direction as the rock you want to ride on, why bother with the landing? Rocks go through space on and on because they are in an orbit, and will follow that orbit till pushed out of orbit (gravity, impact, thrust from a drive.) Your spacecraft/probe will also stay in the same orbit until it is pushed out of that orbit.
So, now that we have some super-simplified physics we can get to the point.
If you're going to burn a certain amount fuel to put your craft into a certain orbit it'll stay in that orbit. It dosen't make a diffrence if it's sharing that orbit with a rock or going solo. Trying to set up an elaborate ballet between your probe and another body is a risk that's not needed (unless your goal is to study those bodies found in space.)
As far as protection from radiation goes, spacecraft have spent decades (Voyager craft) in space with radiation shielding integrated into them certainly seems like enough that we don't need to use asteroids (of unknown composition) for radiation shielding.
As far as the use of landing on asteroids, there's a whole hell of a lot that we don't know about them. It is worthwhile to make these landings for the sake of learning about our solar system. (Not looking for a debate on funding for space science vs spending elsewhere.)
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If I have in fact read more into it, I apologize, but these are things I feel passionate about. As a matter of fact, the greatest saying to come from the Apollo program was "If we can put a man on the Moon, why can't we... [put your favorite problem here]." And truth be told, there is no reason we can't cure cancer or AIDS, house the homeless, feed the hungry. And believe it or not, we can do these things. It requires the same level of dedication that the men and women of NASA brought to Apollo, along with putting aside profitability and nationalistic pride.
I feel mankind has to explore space, because ultimately there are resources we can tap there to improve life here. Imagine being able to ship heavy industrial manufacturing up to the Moon, reducing the amount of pollution and environmental damage. The Moon is just chock full of mineral resources waiting to be tapped, so we no longer have to lay waste to our planet to dig them out. The list goes on.
I want us to start thinking about this seriously now, before we're forced to in the future by some cataclysmic event. If it's an agenda, then I think it's an important one. As always, opinions will differ.
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Yes! Habayusa dropped the plaque on the surface of Itokawa. The names of some 880,000 people are micro-etched on aluminum foil on the target marker, which is the bright white spot you can see on the surface of the asteroid. "Highly specific technology for manufacturing microscopic semiconductor was applied for their names etched with so fine prints of alphabet of only 0.03 square millimeters." Try to read about it here. [machine translation] [beta]
It takes a signal from earth almost 17 minutes to reach the spacecraft. It takes the same time to get feedback. Also think about the spacecraft's and asteroid's speed. Just try to steer your car with a delay of half an hour. Now you have the right feeling, eh? I think ESA, JAXA, NASA, etc. are doing an amazing job.