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."

Comments

Re:Hayab USA!

[msauve]

As a taxpayer, you should be more upset about your government bailing out auto-makers and becoming mired in costly foreign conflicts.

Not really. Automakers at least produce something useful. NASA has developed Velcro, no, integrated circuits, uh, Teflon, no wait, uh, Tang. Yeah, that's it. All that money for Tang, which basically sucks. Orange Kool-Aid tastes better.

And, before someone provides some lame example of something which actually _was_ developed by NASA, it would have happened anyway - economics and the free market ensure that.