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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.
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.
Don't let BP touch them... We'll have to send Bruce Willis into space to clean up their mess.
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
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Check the probe. They probably left a "Mega maid was here" bumper sticker.
Try something that difficult and there is always the risk of failure. I hope they try again!
“Vapor gives us hope”
Isn't this the tagline from the upcoming Duke Nukem promo material?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
"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.
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.
I can't help but wonder whether the difference in culture plays a role in the success of these kinds of missions. I don't really understand why, but despite the ridiculously rigorous education in Japan, they have very few Fields Medal winners. No South Korean has ever won a Nobel Prize despite being one of the most technologically innovative nations in the world.
The thing is, I don't care how many 150 hour weeks these scientists put into homework when they were 9 years old, I'd rather have a bunch of MIT hackers building my space probe. Somehow our way works, and theirs doesn't. It's probably something to do with Western students thinking more critically because they're trained to question everything they hear... such a difference could easily affect long-term outcomes.
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.
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?
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