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No Samples On Japan's Hayabusa Asteroid Probe
eldavojohn writes "Reports are coming in that JAXA's Hayabusa probe may have come up empty-handed in its bid to collect asteroid matter. There may be gas in the probe but no dust samples as many hoped. Murphy's Law seemed to ride with Hayabusa. 'After landing in 2005 on the Itokawa asteroid, which is about one-third mile long and shaped like a potato, the probe's sample-capture mechanism went awry. To the public's dismay, JAXA officials said they were not sure whether any samples had been collected. Next, the probe's robotic rover, meant to take photos and temperature readings on the asteroid, inexplicably floated off into space and was never heard from again. Worse yet, after Hayabusa took off from the asteroid, all four of NEC's ion engines shut down. So did all 12 of the chemical-fueled rocket engines made by another space industry giant, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The probe was left drifting in space. Then, for more than seven weeks, for reasons still not clear, there were no communication signals from the probe. Public dismay quickly turned to derision and, eventually, indifference.' The probe did return, however, and JAXA hoped to salvage something, but now it appears that the only thing it accomplished was one long and error-prone journey."
If this is true it is very sad news. This probe had a lot of promise, and it's failure is to be regretted. Let's hope that JAXA is not put off trying other missions of this type...they deserve our support.
Smivs on the intertubes!
Whatever. The fact that they successfully landed on a freakin' moving asteroid is an accomplishment in itself.
Living With a Nerd
As is commonly cited here, everything NASA does screws up because stupid Americans don't use the metric system... if only the Japanese would use it they wouldn't have these prob...
[hushed whispering] Uh.. it has come to my attention that some people believe Japan uses the metric system. This cannot be possible for 2 reasons: 1. With the metric system there can't be any stupid screwups like what the Americans do. 2. Japanese always have the most badass robots and this is just a space robot, and therefore must work. I stand by my original statement.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
I trust the engineers will do the honorable thing.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The Hayabusa team managed to recover a severely f'ed spacecraft on a shoestring budget despite misfortune on top of misfortune. Congratulations to them.
JAXA's budget for the project was very very low. The ESA or the NASA would not have been able to match all that was accomplished technologically with such a budget.
“Hayabusa capsule yields gas,” declared one newspaper headline. “Vapor gives us hope”
The newspaper headlines say it all! Hopefully they get something from all the problems they encountered.
Pretty good for a first try. Based on all other attempts to return physical samples from an extraterrestrial body, I'd say they got pretty close.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Aliens cleaned up dust from JAXA satellite using AJAX (If you are a housework-impaired linux geek, I refer to this).
Don't let BP touch them... We'll have to send Bruce Willis into space to clean up their mess.
I know this is only a minor point, but I cook potatoes occasionally and I've never found them to have a uniform shape. Is this the best descriptive term they could come up with?
The collection of samples was a bonus. The actual purpose of the mission was to test the ion-drive, which was fully successful as they ran for more than 1000 hours.
See here for the mission milestones -- note that all the things above 100 points are a bonus.
The conspiracy theorists will have a field day with this one. Obviously someone/something on the asteroid didn't want to be seen
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Try something that difficult and there is always the risk of failure. I hope they try again!
Shhhh!!!!
Can you imagine what a "takedown notice" would do with an asteroid?
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
almost
The submitter of this article has no idea what he is talking about. It will take months to even be sure that there is something in there.
The only tests that have been done to date on the canister is a CT scan which can only detect samples as big as a grain of sand, way bigger then was expected.
The gas in the capsule might have come from evaporated organics / ice of some form. How was this gas detected? The top of the capsule behaved slightly diffirent ( on a sub-millimetre scale ) in various pressure surroundings ( Nitrogen and CO2 under various pressures )
The container has not been opened yet. All this talk is bullocks. The japanese estimate right now is that it will take some MONTHS to come till they know if they have something. The tiniest of particles is enough for this.
Furthermore, the source, a NYT article, does not reflect at all the actual goal of the mission - for this, I refer to wikipedia.
Succes for Hayabusa is considered 100 points. I'll repeat that: Primary mission objective succes is defined as 100 points. You do the math.
Operation of Ion Engines
50 points Success
Operation of Ion Engines for more than 1000 hours
100 points Success
Earth Gravity Assist with Ion Engines
150 points Success
Rendezvous with Itokawa with Autonomous Navigation
200 points Success
Scientific Observation of Itokawa
250 points Success
Touch-down and Sample Collection
275 points Success
Capsule Recovered
400 points Success
Sample obtained for Analysis
500 points Uncertain
This mission IS A BIG SUCCES. There is no other way to talk about it. In the NYT article it is stated this mission was a failure as soon as there is no dust.
And next to that, as said above, it is absolute BS to talk about succes or not at this point.
Let's hope that JAXA is not put off trying other missions of this type...they deserve our support.
Why? If it was one or two component failures or a bad situation, that would be one thing- but virtually every system malfunctioned or never worked in the first place.
There is little to account for that except gross incompetence, and people who are grossly incompetent deserve to be fired, not "supported"- or at the very least, not given the same job again.
Please help metamoderate.
I'd love to point out the manufacturer's label reads: "Japan" - But the benefit of the doubt comes from one crucial fact: Experience. On the evolutionary scale we are basically babies on the space exploration front.
Thankfully the Japanese don't see it that way.
In an American company when something goes wrong, somebody is fired.
In a Japanese company when something goes wrong, they try to figure out what went wrong and fix it som that doesn't happen again. Explains why they overtook the US auto industry so quickly. Also explains how they turned a feudal agricultural economy in the 1800s to an industrial one only 30 years later.
Also NASA does the same thing, when a problem occurs, they look for the problem in the process that allowed the defect to get to production.
Space is hard, you don't get it right by firing people every time there is a setback, the culture you espose only gets you more of the same, nothing new, like missions to asteroids.
The samples landed safely just outside of a small town in Arizona...
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
Of course things are going to go wrong. They in fact succeeded at their primary objective, which was to run the ion engines for 1,000 hours; everything beyond that is a bonus. If anything, the engineers involved ought to be praised for being able to work around all those problems and get the thing back to Earth.
...all I can say is, welcome to space exploration. Where if it can go wrong, it typically will and where tomorrow's missions hopefully are made better by today's mistakes - mistakes even the exalted NASA isn't immune to. At least you got the probe back - after landing on a remote asteroid out in the middle of nowhere which is a major success in my book.
They landed a probe on an asteroid, and returned it to Earth.
They made measurements and took pictures in incredible detail. That Itokawa is apparently a low-density "rubble pile" was a surprise, and surprising science is the best kind!
They did this on a budget that was tiny by NASA's standards.
They learned a lot about the strengths and limitations of their technology. If Japan can recover the political courage to support this kind of ambitious mission, and if JAXA can recover the courage to let its scientists and engineers do the best possible job without management interference, they'll most likely do much better the next time around.
Why is there so much negativity about this incredible mission?
This mission IS A BIG SUCCES (sic). There is no other way to talk about it. In the NYT article it is stated this mission was a failure as soon as there is no dust. And next to that, as said above, it is absolute BS to talk about succes (sic) or not at this point.
Well done. Well done indeed. How you ever got to be moderated fucking +5 informative, I'll never know. Submitter never called it a failure. But you, you say we can't gauge it yet and yet you call it a "BIG SUCCES (sic)." Bravo.
"There's your problem, 'Made in Japan'!"
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
He DIED at the end, so that may be not be an option.
Considering all the things that went wrong, it sounds like the start of a science fiction novel. Alien beings thwarted the mission and tracked the probe back to earth.
LOOK OUT!!! They're on the way!
maybe you should stick to your greeting job at walmart....
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The LANDED on an asteroid and returned. That's a first. A very hard first.
Yeah, the trip with riddled with errors, and yet they recovered from them and still got it back.
Kudos to JAXA.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Then since you're incompetent at judging the success of a space probe mission, you should not be surprised to hear that you've been fired from commenting on the internet.
So what you're saying is....in a few short years because of this error-ladden mission, we should be flying to work Jetson's style, thanks to the Japanese?
WTF? Over?
"To the public's dismay, JAXA officials said they were not sure whether any samples had been collected."
That's Japanese for "it didn't work".
I work in an office where we have periodic dealings with representatives of Japanese industry (actual Japanese people in Japan).I can tell you absolutely that in Japan, if someone says they're "not sure" about whether something happened or is possible, it means "the answer is no".
"It's very difficult" also means "the answer is no"
In the Japanese culture, it's bad to say you can't do something, or to admit failure. Silly as it sounds to us westerners, instead of saying outright "no" they use mushy words to avoid losing face.
There's nothing wrong with that, but you have to understand what they're actually saying when they say things like that.
Putting moderation advice in your
Hayabusa was not a failure, failure of the sample return or no. It returned a lot of information about a near Earth asteroid including (to me) the very fundamental result that the regolith appears to be well mixed. This means that the asteroid is not just a lump of rubble but something is stirring material from inside to the surface and back again. This will prove very significant when we start doing engineering on asteroids (such as mining or setting up bases).
Traveling in deep space is tough. All of the countries that have done it have suffered through a pretty steep learning curve. Japan's space agency should be congratulated for pulling this off; I hope that the (undeserved) bad press doesn't make them shy from trying innovative missions such as Hayabusa in the future.
The article summary was quite harshly worded against Hayabusa.
If you read some of the links provided by another commenter, the basic standard for mission success was whether the ion drives worked continuously for 1000 hours, which they did. It was the first time that such a drive had EVER been used in a probe for any mission.
The mini-lander was experimental by nature, and even by name. Shit happens, sometimes experiments are a success, sometime they are a failure. That's the whole point of an experiment - even the failures can often gain you valuable data.
The best way I can summarize the mission is "Great success until exposure to an unknown environment that equipment has never been operated in before." The fact that they were able to recover the probe means that they'll be able to learn a lot about the comet's environment even just by doing failure analysis of the stuff that broke, which may likely have been due to unexpected environmental exposure aspects.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
There is nothing routine about spaceflight, and there are innumerable things that cannot be controlled for that can ruin a flight. People are always amazed at the redundant systems and awesome engineering that goes into spacecraft, but there is only so much redundancy, fault tolerance, and testing that one can do before you end up with a craft that is either too heavy or too expensive to fly.
I for one am willing to give these guys a pass, at least until there is more information. This was an experimental craft with a lot of untested systems. The mission was a test of them, and the sample return was largely a means to that end. Since the cause of each of the failures is not fully known, it is not possible to say whether they were due to some human failing, something breaking because of the challenging environment, or if one small root failure caused a cascade of otherwise functional parts to fail.
They built a spacecraft that lasted for years in space and managed to return a probe to the earth, something that every other space-faring nation has had problems doing. It takes time, and failure, to get good at these things. It's expensive, true, but anyone who has ever built anything has experienced this.
Hold off on being so preachy and judgmental until we have a sense of what went wrong.
Exageration... the slashdottee's escape....
Let's hope that JAXA is not put off trying other missions of this type...they deserve our support.
Why? If it was one or two component failures or a bad situation, that would be one thing- but virtually every system malfunctioned or never worked in the first place.
There is little to account for that except gross incompetence, and people who are grossly incompetent deserve to be fired, not "supported"- or at the very least, not given the same job again.
Further Above:
The collection of samples was a bonus. The actual purpose of the mission was to test the ion-drive, which was fully successful as they ran for more than 1000 hours.
See here for the mission milestones -- note that all the things above 100 points are a bonus.
I would call the probe a raging success.
Getting there was much more of a feat than what was planned to happen once it arrived. The EVA thing has been done before.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
JAXA operates Ion Engines for more than 1000 hours.
US media calls mission a failure because of failed bonus objectives.
There are some people in your country with a fucking pathetic competitive spirit. Let me tell you that.
Better than Russian!
When something goes wrong you get killed! ( Or used to )
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Quote:
"Look what God did to us, man!!"
*dust flying away*
You are absolutely right, assuming good workers never make mistakes, and people can't learn from failure.
Seriously. I have a hard time deciding whether people who post crap like that on the internet actually think in ridiculously untenably black-and-white terms, whether they are using intentional hyperbole, or whether they are trolling.
Also assuming there is a large enough pool of people who are experienced at building technology to land on and collect samples from comets to replace the current crop with, otherwise you've no guarantee the replacements won't be as bad but without the benefit of real experience.
So what you're saying is....in a few short years because of this error-ladden mission, we should be flying to work Jetson's style, thanks to the Japanese?
Precisely. Also, those cars will fold up into briefcases, and we'll all have talking dogs.
Next question?
Yes. There's a similar story in "The Gold Plated Porsche". Porsche is (was) a small car company. Doors, trunks, hoods etc would occasionally not fit properly during final fitting. They would get driven out to a lot and a team of "experts" would go over them and hammer on them with a rubber mallet until all the parts fit more or less correctly. Porsche advertised this fact and billed Porsches as being hand built. Toyota doesn't have these fixit lots. Toyota took one look at this lot on the Porsche factory campus and engineered the problem out completely. Find the problem with the fit and finish, correct it, move on and find the next problem.
moox. for a new generation.
NEC Ion Engines: FAIL
Mitsubishi Rocket Engines: FAIL
So the engine control unit must have been Toyota, yes?
My sincere apologies. I was in a bit of a rage at seeing this article when it was posted, since it is so wrong.
My last sentence was meant to be
And next to that, as said above, it is absolute BS to talk about the capsule containing a sample or not at this point.
The article, however, does mention failure, and you'll have to agree with me that it does not regard the mission as a succes.
I would also argue that the sentence
"but now it appears that the only thing it accomplished was one long and error-prone journey."
Is really, really negative after seeing the official mission objectives. So strong in fact that I would argue that it is being called a failure, while the mission is far from that.
So they landed a probe on an asteroid, took off, and got it home, whilst testing ion engines, and they gained a massive amount of experience and knowledge.
So yeah, let's fire them for daring to do the unknown.
I agree with you. JAXA now knows where things can be wrong, and cand now fix that on the future missions.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
If you look at cars, actually, it's clear that the Japanese have a different mind set than the Americans have a different mind set than the Germans.
German cars were long built from the standpoint that using all the best parts makes the best car. That's why my 1982 MBZ 300SD is made mostly out of Bosch electrical parts, with a Garrett turbocharger and Bendix brakes. These are both U.S. companies, but they made the best parts, so Mercedes-Benz (at the time) sourced the parts and used them. The Japanese build cars from the standpoint that the best system makes the best car. When a part fails on a Mercedes you usually need to stop driving and fix it or it will break something else in fairly short order, and there's a lot of parts. When a part fails on a Japanese car, odds are that it will still limp along. And further, the limp home mode is more useful, too (unlike my MBZ whose transmission fails to first gear only on any major failure, and is good only for loading onto a trailer.) American cars are built to sell. They're often pretty, they're usually very powerful, they generally get shit mileage and disintegrate quickly. When they fail, they tend to fail spectacularly and expensively.
Unfortunately, today the Germans are building cars priced to sell, so they can't apparently afford all the expensive parts. End result is that German cars are now mostly shitpiles, just like USDM cars. They're made with shitty parts AND they're made unintelligently. Those new DaimlerChrysler designed vans/trucks that UPS is using these days? The ones that are Dodge in front and Mercedes in the rear? They have a low oil sensor that can trip on a steep hill, immediately killing the engine. They also have no traction worth mentioning. We were considering a Sprinter CRD 4x4 as an eventual replacement for the Astro, but that's over.
Amusingly, we dig up iron and make it into steel in the USA, then we stamp it out and make it into cars, then it gets recycled at which point it gets harder, and then it's made into Japanese cars which are just as strong for less weight. The steel's harder to work, but apparently the Japanese have that figured out, because I can't remember the last time I saw an American car with decent fit and finish, but even a Sentra is a fairly tight little construction. Sometime if you get a chance take a look at a Ford GT, the finish is appalling, and that's the latest flagship.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In an American company when something goes wrong, somebody is fired.
In a Japanese company when something goes wrong, they try to figure out what went wrong and fix it som that doesn't happen again. Explains why they overtook the US auto industry so quickly. Also explains how they turned a feudal agricultural economy in the 1800s to an industrial one only 30 years later.
From another comment...
In the Japanese culture, it's bad to say you can't do something, or to admit failure. Silly as it sounds to us westerners, instead of saying outright "no" they use mushy words to avoid losing face.
Are both those reads really right? It's possible that Japan perhaps has a healthy corptocracy where each organization takes care of its own, and maintains an unapologetic front externally. It does sound more likely to me, however, that Japan really isn't as tolerant of failure as most other developed countries.
Why can't it be both?
I disagree: "I have not failed. I've just found 10000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
Yes, Hayabusa was plagued by a number of failures and setbacks. However, IIRC, JAXA is still relatively new to the space game, and rocket science is, well, rocket science. Space is much harsher environment than most of us living in basements will ever realize. The fact that JAXA kept Hayabusa going despite the failures is *anything* but incompetent. As another poster mentioned, look at the Hayabusa project milestones. There were a lot of systems failures, but the project was anything but a failure.
Even if you were to call the project a failure, I'm reminded of the story of a new hire at an investment firm. The new hire is really promising, and his boss puts him in charge of some big investments for a really important client. For a while, the new hire is doing phenomenally well, but one day, he makes a bad decision, the client loses a lot of money and leaves the investment firm. The new hire, knowing how badly he screwed up, sadly drafts his resignation, and delivers it to his boss. His boss reads over the resignation letter, tears it up, throws it in the trash and says to the new hire, "Quit? Are you insane? I've just invested several million dollars in your education! Now get back out there and show me I made a wise investment."
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Explains why they overtook the US auto industry so quickly.
No, that's because the Japanese had spent the better part of the 60s perfecting small, reliable, fuel-efficient automobiles on a protected domestic market. Just in time for the oil crisis of the 70s.
Also explains how they turned a feudal agricultural economy in the 1800s to an industrial one only 30 years later.
No, that was the Meiji Restoration.
And let's not forget the awesome job of imaging and mapping Itokawa. Hayabusa relayed so many observations, it's almost sickening.
Definitely don't go to Crazy Vaclav's Place of Automobiles to buy a car.
Whatever happened to launching probes in pairs? Redundancy 4tw.
Overall this mission was an awesome success. Do it again. Do it twice.
In an American company when something goes wrong, somebody is fired. In a Japanese company when something goes wrong, they try to figure out what went wrong and fix it som that doesn't happen again.
I understand that there are a lot of pissed off unemployed people out there, but let's stop with the US bashing please. American tech companies are among the most efficient and successful in the world - Intel, IBM, Apple, Microsoft, J&J, Boeing, 3M, etc, etc, etc, etc. And though the US auto manufactures started to bloat in the 1970's, Ford at least has become more efficient than ever. (BTW, Toyota is not exactly at the peak of its powers at the moment).
There is always room for improvement and I'm not a love-it-or-leave-it type, but claiming that all US companies are somehow inferior is simply wrong. Success breeds arrogance which breeds laziness, but that applies to a small portion of the largest institutions when they are no longer driven by growth and innovation but by stability and stock price (once again, see Toyota). Most mid sized and many large companies in the US can compete with any other in the world. And though China makes many of the products sold in the US, those products are designed by American companies.
So what? They tried, it was harder than expected (to the loserboys, maybe, I'm sure the science and technology jocks knew how hard it would be) and it didn't work out like a smooth ride. The loserboys of course cry and scream and shake their heads or, wore, laugh and write it off as a waste of time and money; the jocks know that defeat is just a temporary and often necessary step to victory, so they shrug it off, learn the lesson and go back into the game stronger and more determined. Hayabusa II will be smarter, stronger, better and will have sculpted pectorals and bulging biceps. It will take that scrawny asteroid by the neck, steal its lunch money... er, dust, beat it up and stuff it into a locker. Because that's what jocks do.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
I think we should give them a mulligan on that one, and let them retake the shot. Seems fair, no?
A private party could have failed at 1/10th the cost!
Sorry, couldn't resist. The reality is you are essentially building a remote control robot. Except its got to run for 5 years and be controlled from a few million miles away. And no, you don't get to replace a fuse every now and then.
It is hard - you develop requirements from the best sources out there. You design with some of the best engineers. You try to make critical system redundant (at least at this price point). You build with the best parts. Yet you can still be disappointed by failure.
Scientific missions can sometimes be even harder. The circuit boards have to be made with special fiberglass and marked with special ink so that they don't out-gas and potentially cloud an instrument. Who thinks of details like this?
And yes, sometimes they miss by a little.
Just don't drink the tea and you'll be fine.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
How appropriate, the Japanese hunt and "collect" whales in inner space and yet, nothing in outer space. Co-inky-dink? I think not.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
This was a triumph. I'm making a note here.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Also NASA does the same thing, when a problem occurs, they look for the problem in the process that allowed the defect to get to production.
I wish they had applied that methodology to ARES. Seriously, a launch vehicle that can't even lift into orbit the very capsule it's designed to launch? Something definitely went wrong there.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
"The probe did return, however, and JAXA hoped to salvage something, but now it appears that the only thing it accomplished was one long and error-prone journey."
No, it tested the ion propulsion system and the pictures of the asteroid are fantastic. Look at them all. The first "rubble pile" asteroid photographed up close. There was a whole special issue of Science dedicated to the imaging and other results. Sure, plenty of things didn't work, plenty of things broke, it took much longer, but the real accomplishment was still managing to get a very useful mission out of it, and as others have pointed out, it's premature to say there is nothing in the sample container.
This mission was a triumph! A huge success. And they're still doing science! :-)
I always wonder how many of these failed space missions would have gone better if there was a little man or a robot or something that could crawl around on the probe and press the reset button or hit the solar panel unfolding motor with a hammer a few times to get it to finish opening up...
We need to start inventing more intelligent or easy to control microrobots that can do that grunt work that a person could do to keep the systems running good ;)
ìì!
And Toyota has never had a problem since...
Contrast what this article says (Ohhh! Nothing found!) with this one: http://www.rtve.es/noticias/20100629/tesoro-extraterrestre-encerrado-capsula-hayabusa/337615.shtml (Spanish, Google translator is your friend) "Confirmed. The probe Hayabusa has brought asteroid dust. JAXA scientists have not opened the probe yet [...] but they made a X ray analysis and learned that inside of the capsule there are some particles smaller than a millimeter." They link to http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2010/06/20100624_hayabusa_e.html for the particle confirmation, but there's nothing of the sorts here. So, while some journalists claim that nothing (aside from gas) was found, some others claim that there really are some dust particles inside. All this, while JAXA just says that they are still working on it. Who needs facts when you have a news story?
2019 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
inexplicably floated off into space and was never heard from again
Was it actually safe to assume this rock in space had gravity? I would assume it would not... or barely enough to attract anything.
On the internet, everything is trolling, unless it's not.
This puts you in a rage? We have no anti-aging technology! THAT should put you in a rage!
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.