Oh bother, looks like a mistake during a down link hand off from one ground station to another resulted in the robotic lander Minerva to be dropped at the wrong time. Hayabusa (it’s shadow is visible on the above photo, cool eh?) had been making burns to keep station over the asteroid Itokawa when the lander was commanded to release. The spacecraft was moving away at a speed of 15cm/sec, 2cm/sec faster than the asteroids escape velocity. So, Hayabusa launched Minerva into space. That sucks, I was looking forward to seeing that hop around on the surface. However, all is not lost. The laser range finder system on Hayabusa is working great, the thrusters are working pretty well to keep correct orientation, and plans for the slug to be shot into Itokawa is still on the short list of planned events.
