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Hayabusa Returns Particles From Asteroid
The collection module of Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft, as recently noted, was on recovery believed to contain no samples from the asteroid Hayausa it had been sent to investigate. That conclusion may have been premature; reader mbone writes that
"The BBC now has a story, 'Hayabusa capsule particles may be from asteroid.' Apparently JAXA (the Japanese Space Agency) has opened the sample container returned to Earth by Hayabusa, and has released 'images of tiny dust particles inside the container.' Whether they are asteroid particles or pieces of dust brought all the way from Earth remains to be seen, but they were certainly returned from the asteroid — a remarkable technical feat. This announcement, I think, gives considerable hope that these particles are from the near-Earth asteroid, Itokawa, as the Japanese have been very careful in trying to avoid contamination. Even a tiny speck of dust would be very revealing about the asteroid's constitution and possibly its history as well. Kudos to JAXA for a job well done."
That was the plan, but oops, MINERVA, the detachable mini-lander, missed, and went sailing off into deep space.
For the sampling mission, the plan was to make brief contact with the sample-grabbing-gadget, but the probe actually sat there for 30 minutes. Then it popped back up, and tried again a few days later.
Maybe it had a weight of a tenth of a gram in the feeble gravity of a 500-meter rubble pile, but it's technically correct (the best kind of correct!) to say that not only did Hayabusa land on an asteroid, it landed twice on the asteroid.
Kudos to JAXA for a job well-done, and the image of Earth on final approach was just sweet. Totally unnecessary to verify that the probe was on target, but taken just because after 7 years of mission-threatening failures, it was good to be home. (Even if its last thoughts were "I wonder if it'll be friends with me?" in reference to the wind, not the ground :)