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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."
No, not really... because in order to get to the asteroid, you've got to match orbits with it, which means that you're already going to whereever the asteroid is going.
Wouldn't they provide rudmentary protection against space radaition somewhat?
This might be more useful, but given that the only major cause of radiation in space is the sun, and shielding machines against solar radiation isn't actually that hard, it's probably not worth it.
If you ask me, NASA and other space agencies should be firing out probes like crazy.
Absolutely.
Given that we now have two designs of Mars probe that have proven to be wildly successful --- the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, and the Pathfinder lander --- I think that the right think to do now is to mass produce them, bulk launch them, and drop a dozen of each on Mars. Because the design's been finalised, the cost per probe should be a fraction of what it was for the original; just work from the blueprints. And because you're launching lots, you can stand a higher failure rate, so you can target more interesting parts of the planet. That way you should be able to get some seriously interesting science, very cheaply.
(The reason why all the Mars probes are showing really boring bits of desert is because they've been deliberately targeted at wide, flat areas to increase the chances that they'll get down safely.)
Over a distance of 3x10^11 m they land on an object only 548 m long. The corresponding opening angle is so small that my calculator cannot do the math.
Congratulations!