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NASA Astronomers To Observe Hayabusa's Fiery Homecoming
coondoggie writes "NASA said that a group of its astronomers will have a front row seat in Australia to watch the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa's high-speed, fiery return to Earth. It is bringing with it a hunk of the asteroid Itokawa. The spacecraft is expected to land in an unpopulated area of Australia at approximately midnight locally, or 7 am PDT, on Sunday, June 13. Some 30 NASA astronomers will be flying onboard a specially equipped DC-8 with instruments that can monitor Hayabusa's reentry."
Being the avid Sci-fi fan that I am, I can't help but wonder if the the people who made the choice of landing of Hayabusa in an unpopulated outback of Australia gave any thought to the idea that the asteroid Itokawa may be a source of biological contaminants?
What I'm saying is, Hayabusa lands in the heart of unpopulated Australia, then a small town in the area gets ravaged by "bio-terror", then the military issues a media blackout.. You know, the standard plot of a zombie outbreak ensues..
I can't be the only one who thought of this scenario.. Does anyone else think the same as me? Discuss!
tl;dr - Choice of remote Australian outback for Hayabusa to stem contagion fears in case of zombie outbreak?? Discuss.
Does anyone know if there is more information? I.e. Which side of Australia will it approach from and a more exact time? I'll be a couple of hours out of Sydney and would like to know if it will be observable. A quick search around NASA's website and Google didn't reveal anything helpful.
In case you haven't followed that drama you should do that now. Keeping that bird in control, managing it to do some science and finally getting it back was seriously heroic by JAXA. This was easily the most problem-ridden probe ever making it back (well, almost now). I hope the last leg of that epic journey will go well.
Best. Mail. Job. Ever.
It is true that there aren't many parts of the world that are unpopulated. However, large tracts of Australia genuinely are. There are certain patches of Australia where it is likely that no human has ever set foot (yes, including Aborigines). There really are very few other places in the world that are as 'empty' as the interior of Australia. Antarctica obviously. And random areas of the Greenland ice cap. And not much else.
However in this case the area mentioned in the article is empty not because of its remoteness, but because it's a military reserve/testing ground. They did atmospheric nuclear testing there in the 50s. Non authorised personnel aren't allowed - so they can be reasonably confident it's 'unpopulated' for the purposes of the Hayabusa landing.