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Future of Hayabusa Asteroid Probe Looks Bleak

Posted by Hemos on from the here's-to-hoping dept.

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."

2 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Adventure! by Rei · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If it does fail, this will bode very poorly for Japan. JAXA had a very humiliating loss of two spy satellites in 2003, and is still recovering from that. This was an incredibly ambitious mission, so a lot is riding on it.

    --
    Very well; let this abomination unto the Lord begin!
  2. Re:This just proves that ... by HouseOfMisterE · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No lie, a local "Movie Gallery" video rental store used to have 5 or 6 of the Overfiend episodes available for rent on VHS. The tapes were on display in the children's animated section and there wasn't any minimum age requirement for rental (Movie Gallery doesn't even intentionally stock porn).