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Hayabusa To Begin Long Journey Back to Earth
Sparky writes "Japan is planning to set the Hayabusa spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth next month after a delay of more than a year, but it's far from certain that it will get back safely. It was supposed to retrieve asteroid debris, but it's thought that a computer error prevented that from happening. A fuel leak means that its chemical thrusters are out of action, and the craft is relying on its weaker ion engines. The journey back will take 3 years, and the capsule will be on Earth in June 2010 — even if it is empty."
Hayabusa To Begin Long Journey Back to Earth
I'm sure Ken and Guile miss him.
Wizard Needs Food, Badly
Maybe to test if the re-entry works.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
As the summary clearly indicates, they're not 100% sure wtf is up with it. Bringing it back allows them to figure that out, as well as collect any asteroid debris it might have successfully picked up. In addition, they'll be able to track down the computer error to avoid it occurring in future craft. Same with the fuel leak.
Because they spent however million building a ship capable of a return voyage.
It will be wasted if they just give up.
I think this is invaluable research and has taken a tremendous effort by the crew to even get this far.
There may not be humans on-board this time but years in the future someone may end up being saved by lessons learnt in the Hayabusa incident.
(yes, it does sound star trekkish)
liqbase
Basically, the technology to retrieve a satellite from where it is now is likely just as hard as the original mission. Additionally, by the time retrieval would be possible, what would be the point? Technology marches ever on; even if they could retrieve Hayabusa, it's old technology now.
:)
Additionally, such probes are one-shot devices. The components are built to specs to survive hard solar radiation, exposure to space, and all the extreme temperatures involved. I'd venture to guess they'd have to basically rebuild the satellite almost completely to be able to make another attempt with it. It's cheaper to just start from scratch and include the advances available to you.
Now, why bother trying to get it home? It's by no means as important as Apollo 13 (in that no lives are depending on it), but to take a probe that's seen better days and get it all the way back home in the face of what appear to be nearly insurmountable odds has quite a bit of sentimental value. For Japan to get Hayabusa home even in such a depleted state, it would be a great honor to their scientists. (And the fact that there's still *some* chance, albeit very small, that there may have been some material captured just makes it that much better.)
It's the "Incredible Journey" of satellites, or perhaps more apropos, it's the wounded samurai doing everything he can to make it back home before he dies. Very Japanese, and quite a good potential story, too.
The navigation systems shut down for 13 months, only 2/16 engines work reliably, 2/3 of the wheels failed and pellet gyn failed to fire. Yet they're bringing it back to Earth "in case some asteroid dust had slipped into its collection chamber by chance." Because they're feeling lucky?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
If they'd used Opteron, it'd be home already.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Aahhh, what an age we live in. Now give me lightsabres and I'll be happy.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
There is no "parking" orbit in the way you would imagine. The re-entry vehicle will be on a high-speed direct-entry trajectory from its inter-planet course. That is part of the challenge and and a reason to attempt it even if the capsule might be empty.
"My God...it's full of...nothing..."
They should smash it against a comet. There is nothing to bring back anyway. Why now use it to extract useful spectrum data instead? Especially if they are out of fuel, there will be less noise the organics lines, assuming the standard hydrazine propellant. We already know that ion engines work, what are they trying to show? On the other hand, we know that there are organics in comets but we don't know much more than that. Beside, smashing stuff is always fun.
A man with binoculars. That is how it began: with a man standing by the side of the road, on a crest overlooking a small Arizona town, on a winter night. Lieutenant Roger Shawn must have found the binoculars difficult. The metal would be cold, and he would be clumsy in his fur parka and heavy gloves.
Hayabusa is Japanese for a very fast-flying bird, similar (identical?) to a Peregrine Falcon.
-b.
2010 is the next solar maximum! Who wants to place bets that the nav circuits on this thing get scrambled on its way back!?
No, a Ninja is nothing like a Hayabusa, different makes too.
Ninja
See?Hayabusa
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
A Hayabusa is a Japanese bird of prey which attacks other birds by diving at speeds over 200mph into their wings. It seems an appropriate name for a machine designed to land on an asteroid. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa
If you read the timeline of hayabusa's journey it has just been incredible how many things failed. I mean, practically everything imaginable went wrong with this thing. I wouldn't be surprised if their primary purpose in bringing it back was simply to salvage a modicum of dignity. Seriously. They able to upload and download its software. That should be enough to tell a lot about what was wrong with it. I mean, it's not as if they can't tell probably 90% of what they problems were just through data. I'm guessing they're just bringing it back for the sake of at least being able to claim that they got a spacecraft, that was designed to go somewhere and then come back, to actually come back, even if it didn't fulfill any of the purposes for which its coming back was to be useful.
From Deep Space 1;
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Its highly likely that none of the parts that malfunctioned will be contained within the reentry package - theres no point in having those parts retrievable, all you want is the science package so thats all you bring to the ground. The rest will burn up in the atmosphere after seperation.
They are going through with the reentry because theres a chance they did get some debris, and they want to see if the reentry procedure works.