Category: Cool

Now this is the kind of thing that I like to see in the news.

Here is some current information on the mission:
Hayabusa completes journey to asteroid Itokawa by ion engine propulsion

For more background…

…Scientists hope to gain an even better understanding of the physical properties and chemical make-up of the asteroid using Hayabusa’s instruments to locate potential locations for sample retrieval, scheduled to get underway in November.

When landing sites are chosen, the Hayabusa spacecraft can make up to three passes to attempt to capture a total of one gram of surface samples, or about two one-thousandths of a pound.

The approaches will heavily lean on the autonomous navigation system aboard the probe, which must operate correctly with little input from engineers 200 million miles away on Earth and cope with the extremely weak gravity field of Itokawa. A target marker will be released on the surface as the spacecraft closes in.

During each opportunity, a 16-inch funnel will first make contact with the asteroid, followed by the firing of a small metal projectile into the surface at well over 600 feet per second. Rocks and dust kicked up by the impact will be gathered by the funnel and fed into the sample collection capsule to be returned to Earth.

“It breaks the surface and ejecta climbing up through a funnel-like device are collected by a sample catcher,” Jun Kawaguchi explained.

On the first pass, it is planned for Hayabusa to deploy a tiny rover called MINERVA to move across the asteroid for up to two days by leaping from place to place in Itokawa’s near-microgravity environment. The 1.3-pound rover will take stereo images using three cameras, and six thermometers will gather temperature measurements. …

Ambitious mission hopes to return bits of asteroid

The Japanese Space Agency home page (Translated)