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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."
...the fact that they managed to land on a moving asteroid is amazing. The fact that they were able to land on a moving asteroid, take off from that asteroid after landing, and successfully make it back to Earth is nothing short of astounding.
Living With a Nerd
Next time, they need to leave Bruce Willis.
If these prove to be dust particles from the asteroid, this will be a big step for mankind.
Yes, we'll have found yet another place that needs vacuuming.
The "moving" part doesn't complicate anything once you're in space. It wouldn't be like a fly landing on a bullet; the asteroid is only moving relative to other objects in space. As far as the spacecraft is concerned the asteroid is stationary and it can take all the time it needs to land on it.
Try adding a rotation into the mix. Imagine your asteroid is rotating around any axis - and trying to get a space-ship to FOLLOW that rotation without the gravity necessary to actually pull it in.
It's much more complicated than high school physics class.
Lol, I'm sure the original poster was well aware of the fact that there was negligible gravity. I don't think he was amazed by the actual act of lifting off the asteroid. It's the extremely precise trajectory that had to be flown in order to "park" next to the asteroid, and the fact that it actually had to stop, and then form a new extremely precise trajectory all of it's own accord to return back to earth. This is all totally unprecedented, and yes, it really is that amazing.
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 :)
Yeah, I mean, you have the whole emptiness of space to park, but nooooo, you have to park right next to it, don't you. And then you open the door and hit it on the asteroid, isn't it...
Bastard
how long until
You can't forget that gravity either. Its small, but its significant. Because asteroids tend to have awkward shapes too, you can't depend on orbits or any of the other tools you'd use for a real planet. If you're not keeping a kilometer or more away, you have to have a really good gravity map to avoid smashing into the thing.
But like you said, you can't depend on that gravity to actually hold you down, which makes it all harder still. Operations near asteroids are definitely one of the hardest things we do in deep space right now.