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Hayabusa Probe Lands on Asteroid After All

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the take-make-me-turn-this-probe-around dept.

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."

5 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Asteriod rides for deep space exploration? by elliotj · · Score: 4, Insightful

    (disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about this topic)
    Does anybody know whether we could use asteroids to transport probes around space?
    Wouldn't an asteroid potential provide a fast and free transportation system? Wouldn't they provide rudmentary protection against space radaition somewhat?
    If you ask me, NASA and other space agencies should be firing out probes like crazy. Small, inexpensive ones. Do lots of them. And make it so they can communicate with each other. Sort of like a mesh network in space: so one far away could communicate back via other ones.
    We seem to spend a lot of time and money fussing about with silly low gravity science on ISS when we could be exploring the galaxy with probes. I've been very impressed with the Mars probes and would like to see more of that sort of thing.

  2. Re:New name for probe by geomon · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I hope you were trying to be funny. The Zatoichi series of movies is the Japanese equivalent of the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. These movies are great cinema and incredibly entertaining - regardless of your propensity to croon over all things Japanese.

    --
    "Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
  3. 'risk' is hardly why... by FooAtWFU · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Forget the danger. Humans:
    • are very heavy
    • get cramped, bored
    • need food
    • need water
    • need air
    Robotic probes just run off a power supply. Now consider which is cheaper to launch.
    --
    The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
    1. Re:'risk' is hardly why... by thrillseeker · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Robotic probes just run off a power supply. Now consider which is cheaper to launch.

      Consider which one wouldn't forget to deploy the sensor package after spending all that time and money to get to the target.

  4. Re:I bet by shadowbearer · · Score: 2, Insightful


      If we want to continue growing, sooner or later we're going to *have* to move a lot of our industry off Earth. Your economic thoughts, I think, are based off of the startup efforts. Sure, it'd be expensive as hell, and take literally decades to start showing a profit, but once it did, it would have broken us out of our finite resources here on Earth.

      That's the kind of goal, if you want to achieve it, you start planning as soon as you realize it will one day be necessary. Planning, building, *doing*.

    SB

    --
    It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.