Japanese Spacecraft Bringing Back Space Rock

phaic tan writes "Bridie Smith from the Sydney Morning Herald reports on the Hayabusa spacecraft returning to earth in June with samples from the Itokawa Asteroid: 'A Japanese spacecraft will land in Australia in June, bringing with it samples from an asteroid found 300 million kilometres from Earth. The unmanned Hayabusa spacecraft, launched in May 2003, will become the first spacecraft to bring asteroid material to Earth when it lands in Woomera, South Australia, later this year.'"

Comments

Re:Smart enough not to land it on their own soil.

[DamageLabs]

Australia IS a bigger target. Probably easier to hit.

Re:Now that....

[Anonymous Coward]

The more we can do without sending humans to do it in person, the longer it will take before we colonize other planets.

In my opinion eploration by itself has very little value unless we use the knowledge we gain. If we don't intend to put more humans in space I don't really see any big reason to put more robots in space.

Re:Now that....

[element-o.p.]

Really, unless the exploring humans luck into somewhere they can take off their helmets and gloves and physically interact with the environment, they might as well be here watching it on TV.

Gotta disagree with you there. Given the choice of walking on the moon in helmet and gloves or watching a robot crawl across the moon on T.V., I'd much rather be in the helmet and gloves actually on the moon. Even HD and 5.1 surround sound can't capture all the experience of actually being there.