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Future of Hayabusa Asteroid Probe Looks Bleak
mj_1903 writes "After landing, then not landing, then potentially landing on an asteroid it appears as though the Japanese spacecraft may have collected specimens of the asteroid. Unfortunately a host of problems is continuing to plague it including a lack of fuel, a shutdown of part of the chemical orientation system, a complete failure of the flywheels and communication issues. The Japanese team are however not giving up on it and are still hopeful that they can return it to the earth in June of 2007."
Ground control: Begin return sequence.
Computer: I'm afraid I can't do that Dave...
Ground control: What? Begin return sequence, now!
Computer: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it...
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If you anagram Hayabusa, you can get 'AHAA BUSY'
It is also funny that there is an ad for 'Apollo 13' on the page describing the Hayabusa's 'horde of problems' on its return mission to Earth.
I wish the team good luck on its return, I really hate to see space missions go awry.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
All those "sci-fi" movies about bringing back ghosts/goulies/aliens/gods from Space is more factual, than not. We should use this as proof of I.D. and add it to kansas textbooks
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Whatever you might say about this mission, it certainly is exciting. I can't recall any other with such a level of failures and malfunctions, yet still with a hope, if at this point slim, of succeeding (Maybe SOHO has had an equal number of near death experiences over a much longer time span).
I was looking forward to seeing how similar ... or not ... the returned samples were comapred to those brought back from the Moon.
Knowing these sorts of similarities is a pretty big f* deal, in my personal Top Ten solar-system questions.
I have personally long believed that our Moon isn't supposed to be here, and it was used to transport the liquid water that *used* to be on Mars to the Earth many billions of years ago. The tides are a function of the 'sloshing' that's still taking place from this transfer, and the Moon's gravity is supposed to damp the process (that's why they towed the Moon here, it was a planetoid, the largest asteroid).
Call me crazy, but, I think who/whatever put us here did all of this beforehand to prep the place.
The Itokawans clearly won't stand for your hostile incursion. Better leave them be before they decide to take the battle to us.
____
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"Aha, by USA"
This is what the engineers will be overheard saying when they review what went wrong and track it down to a particular computer chip...
The specimens included one statue (of one matching pair). The probe needs to find the other statue in preparation for the Black Moon. They need Dr. Walter Smith. I hope they didn't forget to load the Dragon Sword.
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What is more surprising than anything in this story is; it seems like the nipponese engineers actually show some resourcefulness and problem-solving skills, and don't seem to drown in any "All hail the great leader" group mentality that seems to prevail otherwise in their society.
/Lindus
Solutions seem to be cropping up quickly and in a continuous stream to their problems, instead of becoming stuck in negotiations or meetings with no resolutions that we have seen all too often on other occasions.
All in all I must say I am impressed. And if it comes back it will be a great success for the team.
With hopes it all works out in the end,
Hayabusa was a very innovative and daring mission. I think it bodes well for Japanese planetary missions in the future. But they really made a mess of the mission operationally. It seemed to me the planning showed lower proficiency than US missions. Expect them to improve.
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Damn mods wouldn't know great video games if one sliced them in the ass... ;^)
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You must be kidding.
Check out the record for probes to Mars over the last several decades, between the USSR/Russia and the USA. By such measures, the people of most countries aren't so smart compared to what the universe throws at us as challenges.
Perhaps the most humbling recent example was the Mars Climate Orbiter. Imperial versus metric confusion? Pathetic. The universe is either a pretty unforgiving place, or it has a deep and mean sense of humor.
Hayabusa has done fine. Not great -- it has not met all its ambitious goals -- but fine. The pictures of the asteriod are awesome, and show features greatly different from any other asteroid that has been imaged up close. At the very least, the mission accomplished the goal of orbiting and surveying the asteriod, something which has been done only one time before (the NEAR mission to Eros). Then it took off again, which no mission has ever done.
The people running the mission deserve alot of credit for getting this far despite the hardware problems, and I hope they still manage the goal of getting sample return.
.. the tides are caused by the moon's gravitational pull effecting the rise of the sea level towards the moon .. this has been known for many many many years...
As for "whomever/whatever" having "planned all this" .... Uh .. yeah ... given natural development and adaptation to an environment, things couldnt be any different than the way they are now ... if the planet was 20 degrees colder, we'd likely be covered in fur since only our ancestors born with fur (way way back) would have survived long enough to breed, animals such as a scorpion which cannot survive cold climates wouldnt be around in thier current form, we'd have much larger ice caps, etc etc...
Or perhapps someone invited the scientoligists over for dinner?
If they lose it they can always claim it was attacked by a giant moth.
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At least their reputation for making fast but unreliable junk is intact. :)
"We are not in Kansas anymore" :-)
Why can't
You have to admit, this is a huge technological feat. Think of all the effort that was put into the DARPA grand challenge, right here on Earth, and then think of all the crap that went wrong. To even try to do what the Hayabusa Asteroid Probe has done takes a lot of effort and money. If they only get 50% of it right, that is still a huge accomplishment.
Look at it like this, at least they are not spending their money on trying to figure out ways to stockpile enough munitions to destroy the Earth 4 times over. The chances that they will help uncover information that is *useful* to mankind is quite large... we should be applauding them.
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Learn all that is learnable and transmit that information back to Earth.
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If PPC computer is code for: Over priced hardware. Intell inside is code for: Cheap POS computer. Is it still true that made in Japan is still code for: cheap quick plastic junk?
"The universe is either a pretty unforgiving place, or it has a deep and mean sense of humor."
It's both, my friend. It's both.
Regards;
It's had some serious systems problems -- but the whole idea of these sorts of mission development cycles is that you put together the machines much faster and with (relatively) modern hardware. Used to be you paid a ton for extreme redundancy in your systems, and ended up with much more expensive probes with 10- or 20-year old systems. This is the Spirit and Opportunity model, not the Cassini model. You expect to lose some of your bets that way, but to be able to build and launch faster for much cheaper, and to therefore get more for your cash.
The relative inexperience of the people running the show has been a secondary factor in my book. They've been resourceful once the problems were coming in; it was more the build quality and the basic idea of using unprecedented technology like their (botched at the wrong moment) altimeter system that went bad. The ground controllers are taking some heat, but maybe a little too much, for their attempts to cope with a series of system failures.
Neither one of those is a serious long-term problem. The shorter-build-cycle model isn't going to stop soon, and for every Beagle you get a Spirit-Opportunity success story that makes it worthwhile. I'd bet the Japanese developers try to bite off a little less on the ground in terms of breaking-edge technology next time, and in any case they'll have more experience.
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Is that the probe that must become the NINJA DRAGON?
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Hey, I'll be the first to cheer them on and wish them luck. But what's with having 3 flywheels fail? That's the sort of thing that would cause the mission to fail unless they had an assload of fuel and their communications can survive being a little unaligned.
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I think this story might give us a lot more entertainment yet. Quite often in space exploration it's what happens after things go wrong that the really interesting stuff begins. I'm thinking about the engineering solutions to the Apollo13 explosion, the Hubble Space telescope and the problems of the deep space probes like Voyager and Mariner as they encountered difficulties never imagined in their design brief - how a bunch of seriously smart software and electrical engineers stuck in a room with a load of coffee and a white board can turn a disasterous situation around. When a project like this gets effectively written off because the probe is in such bad shape, that's when the engineers get to try out "It's a long shot but it just might work" ideas. I wouldn't bet against the Jap engineers trying some pretty clever stuff to get that probe home - I'm not saying they'll be successful but it could be interesting and entertaining, and we may even learn something from it.
This just shows how much the US has fallen behind in the technology arena thanks to the Bush Administration (tm). Oh wait... Wrong thread, sorry.
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How did you get to be so smart gentimjs? IT IS AMASZING^H^H^H^ZING!!!
Here are a few numbers, just to illustrate how difficult such missions are.
/. would focus a bit more on the Hayabusa success.
Imagine there are lots of little components in each device of the experiment (space ship) and the probability that each of them works perfectly for the whole missing is 99%, a pretty large number considering the stress on the material etc.. Then let's have only 10 components in each device. There is a 0.99^10=0.9 (90%) probability that each device works without problem. Then assume we installed 10 of the larger devices for our mission. Now the chances of success are only 0.9^10=0.35 (35%). Of course reality is a bit more complex, but this simple model illustrates what the odds are.
By constantly emphasizing the problems of an experiment it is very easy to discredit it. This discord hurts not only the Japanese space program, but also the programs in the EU, India, Russia, and US. It may even be harmful to scientific programs in general. I wish the reports at
If the probe fails, they can just call up one their manned giant robots to go get it. =p
We must fight them on Itokawa so we don't have to fight them on the streets of Tokyo!
Besides, there might be oil there.
If they don't think they have sampled dust to return, why didn't they just keep the spacecraft stationed at the asteroid and do more science instead of returning? Or perhaps another asteroid could be located that is reachable with the remaining propellant.
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In order to prove intelligent design, shouldn't someone first manage to prove the existence of intelligence, somewhere, anywhere?
This is a pretty apt summary. The /. headline seems far gloomier than the article, which shows a remarkable improvement in the spaceship's condition since its landing attempt last month. Maybe they won't get it back, but that's not a forgone conclusion. Yet.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Return to earth? Look, you stupid bastard, your arm's off!
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BSD troll template anyone?
The ISAS homepage is now claiming
"Hayabusa is sure to have succeeded in asteroid sampling! It found the Target Marker with 880,000 names."
This sounds a bit all-your-base-ish, so I don't know exactly what the second sentence means. In any case, good news! This mission reminds me of Apollo 13 or the Voyagers, with its brillian improvising. They really deserve to get the samples back.
It only seems like a disaster because they keep trying to keep it going. Any American scientists would have given up long ago.
I think you have a maligned view of scientists worldwide.
Isn't it ironic that both programs were designed and launched in the era of "faster-better-cheaper" Daniel Goldin and were incredibly successful? Now under Bush, Americans are killing their space-science program, effectively killing ISS and just sinking money reinventing what they and soviets did 40 years ago. Chinese are starting from scratch and they are already ahead of Americans, at least they can launch people to space themselves.