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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Cometary and Asteroid Missions _ Hayabusa - The Return To Earth

Posted by: odave Nov 28 2005, 03:08 PM

...starting a new thread for Hayabusa's sampling feedback and the return voyage.

After its nail-biting success in November, will there be enough fuel for the Falcon to make it home?

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Nov 28 2005, 03:16 PM

QUOTE (odave @ Nov 28 2005, 03:08 PM)
...starting a new thread for Hayabusa's sampling feedback and the return voyage.
*

... are we there yet?

Posted by: RNeuhaus Nov 28 2005, 09:56 PM

Recent News from http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fsmatsu.air-nifty.com%2Flbyd%2F2005%2F11&langpair=ja%7Cen&hl=es&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools
2005.11.28
" It is quick the ぶ, link ": Finishing the landing mission,

According to the communication from JAXA public information, the pattern which also use of 28 days spends to the return from safe mode. Establishing three axial control, using the high gain antenna, when landing those where it downloads the data which you acquire are after the tomorrow 29 day. The data being analyzed, to reach to publication, furthermore several days will be needed.

It is quick, the ぶ, the predecessor unexplored mission which is called landing and soil sample collection to the asteroid was completed. The last distance which from now on is directed to the earth starts, but the reaction wheel 3 middle 2 bases are broken, the thrusters which become substitution the propellant remaining amount are few. Probably become also road and with difficult ones. It is something which prays the collection success of of safety of road and the reentry capsule which rounds off the mission.


This article is still unclear to me. It seems like that Falcon will be acquainted within 28 days from Safe mode to active mode before returning home...That means that Falcon will start pack its bag to return home by December 24.

Rodolfo

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Nov 28 2005, 10:09 PM

QUOTE (RNeuhaus @ Nov 28 2005, 09:56 PM)
This article is still unclear to me. It seems like that Falcon will be acquainted within 28 days from Safe mode to active mode before returning home...That means that Falcon will start pack its bag to return home by December 24.

Rodolfo
*


I think they were talking about the 28th and 29th days of this month; i.e. November 28th and November 29th.

They have to be on the road home by December 10th or sooner.

Here's an easier article at Space.com http://space.com/missionlaunches/ap_051127_hayabusa_update.html

Posted by: RNeuhaus Nov 28 2005, 10:18 PM

According to the article of the space.com. By December 10, JAXA team will decide one of two possibles ways to return home: By accompanying the Asteroide Itokawa for 2 years until it crosses close to Earth's orbit before leaving Itokawa.

We will meet that deadline, whatever happens,'' Matogawa said. Otherwise, it would be two more years before the probe _ orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars together with the asteroid _ would be in the right position to return, he said.

or by traveling alone back home for one year and half or later in a route clock's wise to Earth orbit before arriving at Australia.

Rodolfo

Posted by: mike Nov 28 2005, 10:38 PM

It would certainly be interesting if Hayabusa followed Itokawa for all that time.. In all likelihood Itokawa doesn't do much of anything as it tumbles around, but who knows, eh? If nothing else I'm sure they would obtain more detailed imagery. They could manuever Hayabusa such that Itokawa was between it and the Sun most of the journey, which would have to provide substantial protection from solar radiation, the most likely hazard when spending time near the Sun (gotta be, right?). Then again, another six months, and if Hayabusa is disabled, that's it, and how interesting is Itokawa, really?

Perhaps they will flip a coin..

Posted by: Joffan Nov 29 2005, 01:06 AM

I'm not sure that sitting in Itokawa's shadown would be a great idea for keeping the batteries charged...

It's pretty remarkable how little difference it makes in time though, between powering home and just drifting along with Itokawa.

Posted by: mike Nov 29 2005, 02:16 AM

Yeah, I remembered the solar panels need some solar radiation after I posted that.. smile.gif Half-in-shadow, half-out-of-shadow, then!

Posted by: Ishigame Nov 29 2005, 08:04 AM

I would tell you some bad news…
JAXA says Hayabusa has troubled with both of main/backup thrusters.
Main thruster system could turn to ice, the other one have leaked.
Now they are holding press conference now.

According to Matsuura's Blog.
http://smatsu.air-nifty.com/lbyd/2005/11/3_dc16.html

Now we can read translations. Thank you a lot, nao.

Posted by: odave Nov 29 2005, 03:40 PM

Good translation! Worrying news, though. The main thruster system is obstructed, the backup system leaks, and they don't have attitude control. Which prevents them from using Hayabusa's HGA, and communications with the other antennae have been spotty.

ph34r.gif

Here are some snippets:

QUOTE
Kawaguchi:We tried to recover from the safe mode in operation via DSN at 26th night and Usuta on 27th, but the remaining system-A thrusters did not generate enough propulsion force. So we failed to restore the attitude control.

It seems that some trouble in valve may cause obstruction, or the pipes may be frozen.
[...]
Looking at current situation, we think it takes considerable time for recovery.
[...]
We now will concentrate our efforts on recovery of attitude control as the top priority.

But...

QUOTE
Fuel remains enough and the pressure is proper.
[...]
Unknown: Must the vehicle leave Itokawa by the beginning of December? How long can it be extended?

Kawaguchi: We can extend it to the mid of December, if it has only to return.

So they have a little time to play with. Good luck, guys!

unsure.gif

Posted by: nop Nov 29 2005, 04:51 PM

Sorry for multi-posting.

If your friends are working in NASA/JPL, please show them this message:
"Hayabusa needs help"
http://5thstar.air-nifty.com/blog/2005/11/hayabusa_needs_.html

We need to make use of NASA 70m parabola for recovery of Hayabusa.
Though we understand this is a selfish request, we can't help asking for your support.




Anyway,

QUOTE
So they have a little time to play with. Good luck, guys!


We have always been encouraged by posts in this forum. We appreciate your posts!
I hope your cheers will touch the JAXA teams and Hayabusa itself smile.gif

FYI: In Japan, the ad of LIPOVITAN-D symbolizes overcoming and conquest of various troubles. Good luck.

Posted by: odave Nov 29 2005, 07:03 PM

QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Nov 29 2005, 01:44 PM from the What's Up thread)
I do not mean this to sound rude, but aren't there more direct communications channels between the Japanese and US space programs, rather than hoping that someone on an Internet board will send the message through?


I think 5thstar is a fan, just like us, sending out a personal plea. No doubt JAXA/ISAS are going through whatever official channels they use for DSN access - heck, they probably have them on speed dial smile.gif

Posted by: Orlin Denkov Nov 29 2005, 10:41 PM

QUOTE
Probe returning to Earth after asteroid landing
Alok Jha
Monday November 28, 2005
The Japanese space probe Hayabusa began its journey home yesterday after becoming the first spacecraft to successfully land on an asteroid and collect samples.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1652178,00.html

What can we say about the level of credibility of the information provided above. huh.gif
I wish it would be true... Hope that troubles are surmountable.

Posted by: TheChemist Nov 29 2005, 11:09 PM

Probably not good things mad.gif

There are two press releases for Nov29 at the Jaxa site (in japanese only, so far) with several images and graphs:
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2005/11/20051129_hayabusa_td2_j.html http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=ja_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jaxa.jp%2Fpress%2F2005%2F11%2F20051129_hayabusa_td2_j.html
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2005/11/20051129_hayabusa_j.html http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=ja_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jaxa.jp%2Fpress%2F2005%2F11%2F20051129_hayabusa_j.html

Edit : A small piece of the 2nd document appeared in english :
http://www.hayabusa.isas.jaxa.jp/e/index.html

Posted by: nop Nov 30 2005, 03:16 AM

Dear 5thstar (if you read this forum), ljk4-1, odave and other guys,

Very sorry for my misleading post. I posted it just as a fan feeling a sympathy for 5thstar's message and I also believe that Prof. Kawaguchi is already doing what to do.

Anyway, sorry if you felt unpleasant, and thank you for your kind replies.

Posted by: RNeuhaus Nov 30 2005, 04:00 AM

QUOTE (nop @ Nov 29 2005, 10:16 PM)
Dear 5thstar (if you read this forum), ljk4-1, odave and other guys,

Very sorry for my misleading post.  I posted it just as a fan feeling a sympathy for 5thstar's message and I also believe that Prof. Kawaguchi is already doing what to do.

Anyway, sorry if you felt unpleasant, and thank you for your kind replies.
*

Hello Nop,

Don't worry of your post. This forum is open. Everybody shares the information and we respect the opinion and feeling from others. We are tolerant and educated people as you! biggrin.gif

Rodolfo

Posted by: hugh Nov 30 2005, 12:40 PM

QUOTE (odave @ Nov 29 2005, 03:40 PM)
Kawaguchi: We can extend it to the mid of December, if it has only to return.


But after that, Kawaguchi said that a later return (after early December) means a different (sharper?)re-entry angle, and that the re-entry capsule has little margin to withstand the extra heat.
It doesn’t sound too good. One Hayabusa project manager was quoted weeks ago as being “not optimistic” about there being enough propellant for an earth return at the present rate of usage. That was before the 30-minute “stay” on Itokawa and the leaky thruster, and all the other systems problems. It’s far from over yet, but it might be too high a hill for them to climb….

Posted by: deglr6328 Dec 1 2005, 12:04 AM

Grist for the Moomaw mill biggrin.gif ...

This from the Nature online news article...

"The mission is renewing Japan's confidence in space activities. JAXA has recently tried a string of high-risk missions, but has seen many failures over the past few years. "Hayabusa's success has become a tailwind for Japan's space development," Hajime Inoue, JAXA's executive director, said at a press conference. "It proves that the way we have been doing things wasn't wrong."

blink.gif blink.gif I hope that is a translation gaffe and they really don't think that everything is a-ok with thier whole program because of a recent streak of (much needed) luck!

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Dec 1 2005, 12:35 AM

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Pride goeth before a leak.

Posted by: helvick Dec 1 2005, 12:48 AM

Nice detailed update from Emily over at http://www.planetary.org/news/2005/1130_Hayabusa_Team_ReEstablishes_Command.html

Posted by: RNeuhaus Dec 1 2005, 02:24 AM

Dramatic news extracted from Planetary.org:

At this point, Hayabusa's exact location is unknown, although Kawaguchi said that it is "still within several kilometers from Itokawa." Moreover, he added, "there is little chance" they will lose touch with Hayabusa again, at least in terms of where it is now.

Not yet know where Hayabusa is located, perhaps it might fall on Itokawa due to the gravity tug and/or by the Sun wind pressure which is pushing it toward to Itokawa if it is located on the south of Itokawa (the South Polar of Itokawa faces to Sun and Earth).

Rodolfo

Posted by: mike Dec 1 2005, 04:18 AM

If Hayabusa's thrusters persist in being only half-useful, traveling with the asteroid until it gets closer to Earth may be the only choice - unless of course they won't be able to generate enough thrust before Earth flies away regardless.. Yet another cliffhanger.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Dec 1 2005, 05:40 AM

QUOTE (mike @ Dec 1 2005, 04:18 AM)
If Hayabusa's thrusters persist in being only half-useful, traveling with the asteroid until it gets closer to Earth may be the only choice - unless of course they won't be able to generate enough thrust before Earth flies away regardless..  Yet another cliffhanger.
*

My understanding is that they have a heating system of some kind but are cautious about collateral effects from too much heat. I would guess that if it came to an all-or-nothing point they could decide to take their chance and try to heat up the frozen thrusters.

Posted by: ljk4-1 Dec 2 2005, 07:53 PM

Would it be possible to send out a probe to snag Hayabusa and bring it back to Earth with its surface samples? Or maybe remove just the samples and bring them back?

I think either scenario would be easier than trying a landing again on the planetoid at this point.

Posted by: RNeuhaus Dec 2 2005, 08:31 PM

There many options. Wait for a while until before than December 10, next saturday to know what will be the final decision for the home return.

1) Travel along with Itokawa and then direct toward to Earth alone (more than 3 years). Their risks are on the power supply or batteries when it approaches to Mars' orbit where there are less sun radiation.
2) Travel alone back home (1 1/2 year). It depends upon to the health of thrusters.
3) Travel along with Itokawa and then wait for a rendezvous probe which will tug it until dropping to Earth.
4) Land on Itokawa and stay dormant upon the future visit.
5) Abandon it to his fate by wandering on the space.

Rodolfo

Posted by: Bob Shaw Dec 2 2005, 08:34 PM

QUOTE (mike @ Dec 1 2005, 05:18 AM)
If Hayabusa's thrusters persist in being only half-useful, traveling with the asteroid until it gets closer to Earth may be the only choice - unless of course they won't be able to generate enough thrust before Earth flies away regardless..  Yet another cliffhanger.
*


Mike:

Er, probably not a good idea.

Hayabusa will be expected to travel on some strange variant of a Hohmann minimum-energy orbit (with both Earth's orbit and that of the asteroid being gently touched at start and end of the mission). A 'strange variant' because it's flightpath is constantly altering under the influence of it's ion engines, and active control of the spacecraft (a la SMART-1) will be crucial during the return. So, unlike a traditional 'single impulse' trajectory (with perhaps a couple of tweaking burns halfway or so) Hayabusa can't be left dormant during cruise but will require good communications and good attitude control throughout.

You can't get round this by 'hitching a ride' on a nearby asteroid!

Bob Shaw

Posted by: Bob Shaw Dec 2 2005, 08:45 PM

QUOTE (RNeuhaus @ Dec 2 2005, 09:31 PM)
There many options. Wait for a while until before than December 10, next saturday to know what will the final decision for the home return.

1) Travel along with Itokawa and then direct toward to Earth alone (more than 3 years) Their risks are on the power supply or batteries when it approaches to Mars' orbit.
2) Travel alone back home (1 1/2 year). Depends upon to the health of thrusters
3) Travel along with Itokawa and then wait for an rendezvous probe which will hawl it until dropping to Earth.
4) Land on Itokawa and stay dormant upon the future visit.
5) Abandon it to his fate by wandering on the space.
*


I really think there are very few options!

Option 1) - waiting on-station until the next interplanetary line-up (which might well be many years in the future) *might* work with a probe designed for longevity. Not with Hayabusa, though!

2) - Correct, and the only way to get back home at all.

3) - No, for all sorts of reasons, not least being the fact that we can't even reliably perform such missions in Earth orbit, never mind the depths of space. Anyway, who's paying for a rescue flight - nobody!

4) - 'Dormant' as in, er, deceased. An ex-spacecraft, pining for the Norwegian fjords. I suppose it'd keep the Solar system that bit tidier, and we might see some more closeups on the way down.

5) - Sadly, the most likely outcome. An ion-drive probe has to be *much* smarter and controlled than traditional single-impulse 'artillery' probes, and if the RCS system is almost broken then it's highly unlikely that it'll do more than limp in the general direction of Earth before settling into Solar orbit when the ion drive stops working (at which time we're back in the realms of 'artillery').

Hayabusa is, make no mistake about it, a success - even if no return to Earth is feasible, then it will have carried out an outstanding mission of which JAXA should be very proud.

Bob Shaw

Posted by: odave Dec 3 2005, 02:06 PM

http://5thstar.air-nifty.com/blog/ has a few new Hayabusa updates.

QUOTE
No official information from JAXA yet.

JIJI press issued an article. Prof. Matogawa replied to a query from media saying JAXA will complete taking necessary data by December 5, and will try to analyze the cause of the malfunction and resume the recovery operation.

[...]

Next press briefing by JAXA/ISAS is not likely on or before December 5.


They're still not saying anything about the thrusters. Hopefully no news = no news at this time unsure.gif

Posted by: RogueEngineer Dec 7 2005, 12:58 PM

QUOTE (odave @ Dec 3 2005, 11:06 PM)
Hopefully no news = no news at this time  unsure.gif
*

Another bad news... They are still struggling in the recovery operation, and the bullet may not be fired during the second touchdown attempt on Nov. 26th. See English translation in the comment area of
http://smatsu.air-nifty.com/lbyd/2005/12/post_1331.html#comments
http://smatsu.air-nifty.com/lbyd/2005/12/127450_22cc.html#comments
for details.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Dec 7 2005, 02:07 PM

Are they actually saying that they themselves accidentally programmed the craft with a command NOT to fire the bullet, or just that the spacecraft set itself back to a safe mode that kept it from doing so?

At any rate, it looks more and more as though Hayabusa is going to confirm all my dark warnings about the unwisdom of trying to do too complex a space mission with much too little money. (There is, by the way, a lengthy article in this week's Aviation Week suggesting that JAXA has very belatedly caught onto this fact.)

Posted by: RNeuhaus Dec 7 2005, 02:31 PM

December 7, 2005 05:42 PM

According to the L/D of the Matsuura Shin 也...
Bulletin
* The possibility the bullet not being discharged is high
* It has not recovered the thruster
* Ion using the engine, attitude control (Correction: Speaking accurately, applying the function of the ion engine system, attitude control)
* I To matte (Itokawa) as for starting even with most speed after 14 days
* Concerning return undecided

From blog: Paku http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpaku.txt-nifty.com%2F&langpair=ja%7Cen&hl=es&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

Brief summary from the blog: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpaku.txt-nifty.com%2F&langpair=ja%7Cen&hl=es&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

December 2nd. The chemical engine (the thruster) restart was tried, but small thrust is verified in earnest not to start.

December 3rd, it was verified that the high gain antenna axis of the probe and the angle which the sun and the earth form have expanded to 20 or 30 degrees. As the attitude control method of emergency, the xenon gas for ion engine driving it starts the compilation of the operational software to the thing which does the attitude control with the injection.

December 4th, it executes the attitude modification with the xenon gas injection.

December 5th, the sun, the earth and the high gain antenna axis recover to 10 degree - 20 degrees, presently by way of the medium gain antenna communication does at speed of 256 bit /s. However, because the probe slowly is turning, as for the communication by the medium gain antenna intermittence ones such as 1 minute in 6 minutes.

As of December 6th, it is (Hayabusa) quick the (Itokawa) ぶ, from the I To matte in gaze direction it is in the place of the 550km. As for distance from earth 2 hundred million 9000 ten thousand km. Presently just 1 basis the reaction wheel which remains verifies the recovery moving and the revolution with the 1000rpm.

In the other word, now Hayabusa is around 550 km distance from Itokawa and is 290,010,000 kilometers from Earth. (almost just in the opposite side) The RCS z-axis still works at 1,000 rpm.

Rodolfo

Posted by: nop Dec 8 2005, 12:29 AM

More translations have been added on the comment area of Matsuura's blog.

Posted by: Harder Dec 8 2005, 01:35 PM

The Dec 8 update of the Y.M. Column is now online. The main issues with Hayabusa are already known, but this is a Must Read, if only for the intense atmosphere described in it. I wish them success!

http://www.planetary.or.jp/en/column/index.html

Posted by: odave Dec 8 2005, 02:48 PM

From the above:

QUOTE
During its operation Dr. Kuninaka complained, “Oh boy! We’ve already used as much as 100gr of xenon.” followed by the conversation with a staff, “What? Xenon is getting short so seriously?” “Not necessarily right now but xenon costs as much as 1000 yen per 6gr. So, we’ve used up 20,000 yen worth.” “Don’t be so stingy! Beef steak worth 20,000 yen per 100gr is just common all over in Tokyo, I’ve never had it, though.”


That's about $165 US. If Hayabusa makes it home, everyone on the team should get a steak, chased down with LIPOVITAN-D!

Posted by: tedstryk Dec 8 2005, 03:36 PM

QUOTE (odave @ Dec 8 2005, 02:48 PM)
From the above:
That's about $165 US.  If Hayabusa makes it home, everyone on the team should get a steak, chased down with LIPOVITAN-D!
*



I have a stupid question...What is LIPOVITAN-D? I know it is something the Hayabusa team drinks, but what is it?

Posted by: odave Dec 8 2005, 03:46 PM

QUOTE (tedstryk @ Dec 8 2005, 10:36 AM)
I have a stupid question...What is LIPOVITAN-D?  I know it is something the Hayabusa team drinks, but what is it?
*


It's the Japanese equivalent of Red Bull, a high-energy drink.

Posted by: odave Dec 8 2005, 04:01 PM

Lots of good info in those http://smatsu.air-nifty.com/lbyd/ - the volunteer work is much appreciated! For those who haven't read it yet, there is some hope for getting some kind of sample back:

QUOTE
Asahi: What do you think of the possibility that the sample were stirred up by the landing and actually gathered? [...]

Kawaguchi: Escape velocity from Itokawa is equivalent to the speed of a pencil dropped from 0.5 millimeter height. It would only bounce up 0.5mm on earth, but on Itokawa where the gravity is small it would jump up more than 10 meters. Buton the second touchdown, the vehicle actually touched the ground for only a second and ascended back, so the sampler horn ascended with the sample, thus the sample would not have reached the capsule. In the touchdown on 20th the vehicle landed on the surface for substantially long time, so we think it is highly probable that the sample that were stirred up have entered the capsule.

Posted by: ljk4-1 Dec 9 2005, 05:08 PM

Status of the Hayabusa

December 7, 2005

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency


As has been reported, it is estimated that part of a series of
attitude and orbit control commands to restore the Hayabusa from its
safe-hold mode have not gone well, and the functions of its major
systems, including its attitude and communication network, have
significantly deteriorated. However, on Nov. 29, a beacon line through
a low gain antenna was restored.

On Nov. 30, we started a restoration operation by turning on and off
the radio frequency modulation through the autonomous diagnostic
function. Subsequently, on Dec. 1, telemetry data were acquired at 8
bits per second through the low gain antenna, although the line was
weak and often disconnected. According to the data transmitted so far,
the attitude and orbit control commands sent on Nov. 27 did not work
well due to an unknown reason, and either major attitude control
trouble or a large electric power loss seems to have occurred. It is
estimated that the overall power switching systems for many pieces of
onboard equipment were reset as their temperature dropped
substantially due to the evaporation of leaked propellant, and also
because of a serious discharge of electricity from the batteries of
many sets of onboard equipment and systems due to declining power
generation. Details are still under analysis.

On Dec. 2, we tried to restart the chemical engine, but, even though
a small thrust was confirmed, we were not able to restore full-scale
operations. Consequently, the cause of the anomaly on Nov 27 is still
under investigation, and we suspect that one of the causes could be
the malfunction of the chemical engine.

On Dec. 3, we found that the angles between the axis of the onboard
high gain antenna (+Z angle) and the Sun, and also that with the earth,
had increased to 20 to 30 degrees. As an emergency attitude control
method, we decided to adopt a method of jetting out xenon for the ion
engine operation. Accordingly, we immediately started to create the
necessary operation software. As we completed the software on Dec. 4,
we changed the spin speed by xenon jet, and its function was confirmed.
Without delay, we sent an attitude change command through this
function.

As a result, on Dec. 5, the angle between the +Z axis and the sun, and
the earth, recovered to 10 to 20 degrees, and the telemetry data
reception and acquisition speed was restored to the maximum 256 bits
per second through the mid gain antenna.

After that, we found that there was a high possibility that the
projectile (bullet) for sampling had not been discharged on Nov. 26,
as we finally acquired a record of the pyrotechnics control device
for projectile discharging from which we were not able to confirm
data showing a successful discharge. However, it may be because of the
impact of the system power reset; therefore, we are now analyzing the
details including the confirmation of the sequence before and after
the landing on Nov. 26.

As of Dec. 6, the distance between the Hayabusa and the Itokawa is
about 550 kilometers, and that from the earth is about 290 million
kilometers. The explorer is relatively moving from the Itokawa toward
the earth at about 5 kilometers per hour.

We are now engaging in turning on, testing, and verifying onboard
equipment of the Hayabusa one by one to start the ion engine. We
currently plan to shift the attitude control to one using the Z-axis
reaction wheel, and restart the ion engine. The restart is expected to
happen no earlier than the 14th. We are currently rescheduling the
plan for the return trip to earth. We need to study how to relax the
engine operation efficiency. We will do our utmost to solve the
problem with the attitude control (such as the restoration of the
chemical engine), then find a solution for the return trip.

Since Nov. 29, our reports have been limited due to difficulties in
confirming telemetry data. We apologize for any inconvenience.
We will inform you as soon as the ion engine is restarted.


This page URL:

http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2005/12/20051207_hayabusa_e.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Publisher : Public Affairs Department
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Marunouchi Kitaguchi Building,
1-6-5, Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-8260
Japan
TEL:+81-3-6266-6400

JAXA WEB SITE :

http://www.jaxa.jp/index_e.html

Posted by: RNeuhaus Dec 9 2005, 05:17 PM

Hope that Hayabusa has a match fire on their side for just in the case that the ion engine won't also be able to be ignited....

I am pessimist of a good trail of "mishapes". sad.gif

Rodolfo

Posted by: The Messenger Dec 9 2005, 07:11 PM

Since the xenon was not intended to be used as an attitude control gas, Are they using a venting valve to adjust the spin and attitude, or can they run zenon into the attitude control system?

In either case, the calculations are quite complex: They would have to maintain a slow rotation rate, and vent the gas at just the precise moment for the right percentage of the roll to adjust the tilt. It would take a very careful trial-and-error assessments to do this (the ultimate $170million dollar video game...and a lot of Lipovan unsure.gif

Posted by: ljk4-1 Dec 12 2005, 08:03 PM

FATE OF JAPAN'S TROUBLED ASTEROID PROBE UNCERTAIN
-------------------------------------------------

Japanese officials are struggling to fix a horde of problems plaguing the
Hayabusa space mission in time to begin its journey back to Earth with or
without a package of specimens that were supposed to have been collected
from the surface of asteroid Itokawa late last month.

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0512/11hayabusa/

Posted by: odave Dec 12 2005, 08:35 PM

QUOTE (The Messenger @ Dec 9 2005, 02:11 PM)
Since the xenon was not intended to be used as an attitude control gas,  Are they using a venting valve to adjust the spin and attitude, or can they run zenon into the attitude control system?
*


From http://smatsu.air-nifty.com/lbyd/, it sounds like they're venting the xenon through the ion engine nozzles:

QUOTE
NHK How is the attitude control by xenon gas, concretely?

Kawaguchi: The vehicle has four ion engines, and the orifice of each engine has a neutralizer with four nozzles per engine in order to neutralize the jet gas electrically. The nozzles are openable and closable. By opening or closing the nozzles to emit neutralized xenon gas jets, we are controlling the attitude. Its propulsion force is very small.


Kawaguchi goes on to say that if they are forced to use xenon for attitude control on the trip back, they'll need to stop the ion engines every time they need to adjust attitude, then re-start the engines for thrust afterward. That will be a time consuming process and quite an exercise in patience.

Posted by: amezz Dec 13 2005, 05:49 PM

Press Conference about Hayabusa present status, will held at 9:30 14rh Dec. JST.

S.MATSU intend to upload Japanese article at 11:00 or so here http://smatsu.air-nifty.com/lbyd/

Posted by: elakdawalla Dec 13 2005, 11:44 PM

Just added this to my http://planetary.org/blog/, I thought I'd add it here for all of your benefit too...We just received the following update from Tasuku Iyori of The Planetary Society of Japan regarding Hayabusa:

QUOTE
JAXA announced to the press that it decided to put off Hayabusa's departure from Itokawa after next fall, thereby expecting spacecraft's return to Earth around 2010. Nothing in detail has yet been reported on the website.
--Emily sad.gif

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Dec 14 2005, 02:33 AM

I very much doubt it will be around by then, and I'm afraid we will soon be able to add Hayabusa to Japan's almost unbroken modern record of space failures -- although at least it came a good deal closer to success than most of Japan's missions do. Space missions simply cannot be done on such low funding levels.

I shudder to report that -- according to the Nov. 28 Aviation Week -- JAXA has been taking its advice on how to reform its space program from Dan Goldin.

Posted by: ljk4-1 Dec 14 2005, 02:38 AM

So - would another nation be willing and able to recover Hayabusa or at least any samples it may have, or even take over its mission?

If the probe is going to hang around Itokawa for almost another year, will it continue to study the planetoid?

Posted by: elakdawalla Dec 14 2005, 02:40 AM

Shin-ya Matsuura's transcript is up in Japanese. Here's the pretty terrible http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fsmatsu.air-nifty.com%2Flbyd%2F&langpair=ja%7Cen&hl=en&c2coff=1&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools. Sounds like little in the way of good news sad.gif --Emily

Posted by: lyford Dec 14 2005, 03:17 AM

QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Dec 13 2005, 06:33 PM)
I shudder to report that -- according to the Nov. 28 Aviation Week -- JAXA has been taking its advice on how to reform its space program from Dan Goldin.
*

BWAH?!?!?! blink.gif

http://translate.google.com/translate_t

Posted by: elakdawalla Dec 14 2005, 03:47 AM

A cooperative translation project is taking place http://mole.den.hokudai.ac.jp/jspace/index.php?LbyD%2F20051214-2...keep refreshing the screen, they are working diligently on the translation.

--Emily

Posted by: lyford Dec 14 2005, 04:47 AM

QUOTE
If the ion engines are ignited again by the 2007 spring, the vehicle can return to the earth on June 2010.

2010? Any massive solar flares scheduled between now and then? I don't know if I can take another Nozomi experience.

I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to be an engineer on these missions - the long hard work of trying to bring the falcon home to roost. It's crazy making enough as a spectator to see the constant ups and downs - 2 bullets fired! No bullets fired! Sample! No Sample! Leak! "Salvation Mode" let alone having to troubleshoot the beast. unsure.gif

Posted by: lyford Dec 14 2005, 05:50 AM

From http://mole.den.hokudai.ac.jp/jspace/index.php?LbyD%2F20051214-2
At first when I read the interview it seemed as if they thought they had a 60-70 percent chance of probe recovery - not it seems it just means the chance of getting it communicating!

QUOTE
Asahi Shimbun Press: Is there a possibility for accidents of other equipment by three-year extension? And what about the running cost during the extension?

Kawaguchi: Of course, the probability of equipment accidents will increase. We have to restart them from the almost freezing state. The figures I put before does not mean that "it can return to the earth with 70% probability"; it means that "for the 70% probability of communication recovery, we will continue the operation."

And this doesn't sound too promising:
QUOTE
Astronomy Monthly(Gekkan Tenmon): Are there any change in your view on the sample retrieval after these events? How much scientific discovery could you make out at this point? You're experiencing another difficult situation now, what is the biggest lesson you've learned in these troubleshooting experience?

Kawaguchi: We haven't been able to download any new data, so our view is still unchanged. Status of the vehicle did change, and there are possibility of data being lost. If minimum power supply is available the data will hold, but we can't tell for sure at this point.

As for scientific discovery, we still have undisclosed informations, but the science community plans to open them to the public as soon as possible.

There are considerable amount of information that only Hayabusa could gather. We won't be repeating on its content for today. At some future date we will publish a formal summary. I consider that these results funded by national taxes should be primarily available to this country. We fear that if these data spread, any researcher from other countries could release a paper as first author. And of course contribution to the world must be considered, too.

Posted by: amezz Dec 14 2005, 10:46 AM

QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Dec 14 2005, 06:38 AM)
If the probe is going to hang around Itokawa for almost another year, will it continue to study the planetoid?


Yes! They MUST do it, we all hope to see once more the Enigmatic Stone Garden of Itokawa smile.gif

Posted by: ljk4-1 Dec 14 2005, 12:17 PM

*** JAXA MAIL SERVICE ***

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Status of the Hayabusa

December 14, 2005

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Hayabusa spacecraft currently undergoes the recovery operation to
resume the communication with the ground stations. It was hit by an
abrupt disturbing torque owing to the fuel leak that occurred before,
and has been out of the ground contact since December 9th. The
project team has a good expect to have the spacecraft resume the
communication soon. However, the project is now not so sure to make
the spacecraft return to earth in June of 2007 and has decided to
lengthen the flight period for three years more to have it return to
the Earth in June of 2010.

On December 8th, Usuda station observed the sudden shifts of the
range-rate measurements at 4:13 UTC with the corresponding gradual
decrease of signal intensity AGC (Automated Gain Controller) read.
The measurement and the intensity change slowly and are currently
estimated due to the out-gassing effect that derived from the fuel
leak-out at the end of last month. The leak occurred on November 26th
and 27th. Since the beacon signal communication resumed on 29th, the
project has made an effort to exclude the vapor gas of the fuel from
the spacecraft. The project has by now identified the out-gassing has
successfully been performed, as its exponential acceleration decay
has shown so far.

On December 8th, the spacecraft was under the resume operation phase
for the chemical propulsion, and was given a slow spin whose period
is about six minutes. From the beginning of December, the project has
introduced the Xenon gas thruster control strategy for emergency,
replacing the chemical propulsion system. But the control capability
of it was not enough strong for the spacecraft to withstand the
disturbance on December 8th. Current estimation says the spacecraft
may be in a large coning motion and that is why the spacecraft has
not responded to the commands sent from the ground station.

The spacecraft has been out of communication since December 9th.
Analysis predicting the attitude property relating to both the Sun
and Earth shows that there will be high possibility counted on for
the resumption of the communication from the ground for several
months or more ahead. However, the spacecraft may have to undergo
another long term baking cycle before it starts the return cruise
operation using ion engines aboard. And it is concluded that the
commencement of the return cruise during December is found difficult.
The project has determined that the return cruise should start from
2007 so that the spacecraft can return to the Earth in June of 2010,
three years later than the original plan, as long as no immediate
resumption tales place very soon.

The spacecraft operation will shift from the normal mode to the
rescue mode for several months to one year long. Long term predict
indicates high probability of having the spacecraft communicated
with the ground station again, with the spacecraft captured well in
the beam width of the Usuda deep space antenna.

The spacecraft will take the advantage of Xenon gas attitude control
again after enough length of baking operation. The Xenon gas that
remains is adequate for the return cruise devised by the ion engines
carried by Hayabusa.
The Hayabusa web page will report anything updated, as soon as it
becomes available.


(Supplement) Hayabusa Rescue Operation

http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2005/12/20051214_hayabusa_e.html#sup


This page URL:

http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2005/12/20051214_hayabusa_e.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Publisher : Public Affairs Department
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Marunouchi Kitaguchi Building,
1-6-5, Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-8260
Japan
TEL:+81-3-6266-6400

JAXA WEB SITE :

http://www.jaxa.jp/index_e.html

Posted by: nop Dec 14 2005, 12:18 PM

English version of JAXA press release:
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2005/12/20051214_hayabusa_e.html
http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/snews/2005/1214.shtml

Translation of the press conference is now completed.
http://smatsu.air-nifty.com/lbyd/2005/12/20051214_18c7.html#c5380890
http://smatsu.air-nifty.com/lbyd/2005/12/1214_8042.html#c5385838

A follow-up article seems now being translated. Wait a moment.
It includes a nice episode about LIPOVITAN-D smile.gif

Guys, wait with patience for the return in 2010 !

Posted by: abalone Dec 14 2005, 12:28 PM

QUOTE (nop @ Dec 14 2005, 11:18 PM)
Guys, wait with patience for the return in 2010 !
*

By then it would have to qualify for Saint Hayabusa

Posted by: djellison Dec 14 2005, 12:45 PM

All sounds a little bit Nozomi-ish really sad.gif I just hope they can keep the think held together for another 5 years ohmy.gif

Doug

Posted by: ljk4-1 Dec 14 2005, 05:11 PM

QUOTE (djellison @ Dec 14 2005, 07:45 AM)
All sounds a little bit Nozomi-ish really sad.gif  I just hope they can keep the think held together for another 5 years ohmy.gif

Doug
*


Speaking of which - is Nozomi still alive? Is it returning any data on the interplanetary environment?

Any chance it could make another attempt at Mars down the road? If JAXA thinks Hayabusa can last five more years, why not Nozomi?

Posted by: nop Dec 14 2005, 05:42 PM

QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Dec 15 2005, 02:11 AM)
Speaking of which - is Nozomi still alive?  Is it returning any data on the interplanetary environment?

Any chance it could make another attempt at Mars down the road?  If JAXA thinks Hayabusa can last five more years, why not Nozomi?
*


Nozomi is alive, I think, but it lost the way to send data to us. Though it captured pictures of the Mars surface from 1000km altitude even on the day of the last operation in 2003, we have no way to get them. We cannot even locate the probe. The transmitter was stopped according to some laws. Now it circles the sun as an artificial planet.

P.S. I fixed my mistake about the year of the last operation. (2004 -> 2003)

Posted by: ljk4-1 Dec 14 2005, 06:09 PM

QUOTE (nop @ Dec 14 2005, 12:42 PM)
Nozomi is alive, I think, but it lost the way to send data to us.  Though it captured pictures of the Mars surface from 1000km altitude even on the day of the last operation in 2004, we have no way to get them.  We cannot even locate the probe.  The transmitter was stopped according to some laws.  Now it circles the sun as an artificial planet.
*


Japan should send out a rescue mission (or ask someone else to do it) to collect both Nozomi and Hayabusa to recover their data and samples. I admit it may take a while to find Nozomi.

While they are at it, someone should find Mariner 9 and get those last few images it took that are still stored aboard the probe. See Carl Sagan's The Cosmic Connection for the details.

Posted by: djellison Dec 14 2005, 06:16 PM

It'd be cheaper, and the results would be better to just bolt on instruments to another spacecraft rather than trying to rescue another one

Doug

Posted by: RNeuhaus Dec 14 2005, 06:25 PM

Indeed yes, but we are still with diaper in space robotic technology. For Hayabusa, it would be much easier by releasing its outside canister but for Nozomi's case is not possible since it was not designed to release anything. I think so blink.gif

Rodolfo

Posted by: ljk4-1 Dec 14 2005, 07:11 PM

QUOTE (djellison @ Dec 14 2005, 01:16 PM)
It'd be cheaper, and the results would be better to just bolt on instruments to another spacecraft rather than trying to rescue another one

Doug
*


But Nozomi and Mariner 9 contain data on Mars at a particular time and place that cannot be repeated again.

Plus it would be so cool! And it would be good training for recovering future space probes, both ancient and modern.

Some day archaeological expeditions will be sent to recover and study old spacecraft to see what has become of them.

Posted by: djellison Dec 14 2005, 08:30 PM

QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Dec 14 2005, 07:11 PM)
Some day archaeological expeditions will be sent to recover and study old spacecraft to see what has become of them.
*


Some day being Apollo 12 smile.gif

Doug

Posted by: ljk4-1 Dec 14 2005, 08:42 PM

Science/Astronomy:

* Asteroid Probe Yields Insight For Planetary Defense

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/051214_after_hayabusa.html

Following roughly two months of notable operations at asteroid Itokawa, Japan's
Hayabusa probe is damaged goods. Hindered by thruster and gyroscope breakdowns,
the spacecraft is under makeshift attitude control with engineers hoping to
finesse the craft onto a homeward-bound trajectory back to Earth.


* Black Hole Swallows Neutron Star, Observations Suggest

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/051214_star_collision.html

A distant eruption of high-energy gamma rays is evidence for a black hole
swallowing another dense object called a neutron star, astronomers announced
today.

Posted by: RNeuhaus Dec 16 2005, 04:01 PM

Example for Hayabusa return starting in June 2007

Hayabusa leaving 2007 to Earth 2010


New trajectory (red line) leaving Itokawa vicinity in spring of 2007, returning to Earth
in June of 2010 is shown here. The Xenon gas consumption meets the current
amount that remains. There will be some strategy needed and left for the operational discussion on how the attitude is protected against unexpected disturbance.


Interpreting the above picture, in the year 2007, Hayabusa will leave Itokawa by orbiting around to Itokawa before taking the orbit around the Sun in the clockwise. The Earth will orbit in counter-clockwise around the Sun. See the red line which is the proyected return home in 2007. The blue line is the proposed route to home in this year.

The question is why Hayabusa will make a small loop in the half way of orbit? (see on the left side)

Rodolfo

Posted by: ljk4-1 Dec 16 2005, 04:16 PM

QUOTE (djellison @ Dec 14 2005, 03:30 PM)
Some day being Apollo 12 smile.gif

Doug
*


Nah, that was a fluke. cool.gif

Posted by: nop Dec 16 2005, 05:28 PM

QUOTE (RNeuhaus @ Dec 17 2005, 01:01 AM)
The question is why Hayabusa will make a small loop in the half way of orbit? (see on the left side)
*


In this figure, the sun and the earth are fixed. That's why the orbit seems strange.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Dec 16 2005, 06:42 PM

ljk4-1 :

"QUOTE(djellison @ Dec 14 2005, 03:30 PM)
Some day being Apollo 12

Doug


Nah, that was a fluke. "


No - Apollo 12 collecting bits of Surveyor 3, not the return of its SIVB, which must be what you are thinking of...

Phil

Posted by: ljk4-1 Dec 16 2005, 06:48 PM

QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Dec 16 2005, 01:42 PM)
ljk4-1 : 
 
"QUOTE(djellison @ Dec 14 2005, 03:30 PM)
Some day being Apollo 12

Doug
Nah, that was a fluke. "
No - Apollo 12 collecting bits of Surveyor 3, not the return of its SIVB, which must be what you are thinking of...

Phil
*


Just being facetious. I do consider Apollo 12 to have conducted one of the first space archaeology missions. I was initially referring to a future time when there is a real plan and system in place for organized space archaeology.

Funny and sad how schools do not recognize the Space Age as a historical period to study in its own right. That too shall change.

Posted by: edstrick Dec 17 2005, 05:44 AM

The Hayabusa orbits plot is in sun-earth-fixed ROTATING coordinates. The loops are where the spacecraft, I think at perehilion, is travelling faster than Earth, while the rest of the orbit it's travelling slower.

Posted by: deglr6328 Dec 17 2005, 08:52 AM

Heathens! How dare you try to explain away Hayabusa's divine epicycles as a mere illusion of refrence point!! tongue.gif

Posted by: Bob Shaw Dec 17 2005, 01:54 PM

QUOTE (amezz @ Dec 14 2005, 11:46 AM)
Yes! They MUST do it, we all hope to see once more the Enigmatic Stone Garden of Itokawa smile.gif
*


I suspect that 'hanging around' Itokawa would not actually involve being near enough to see anything - if the spacecraft has to be kept simply ticking over, then they won't want to waste resources doing extended station-keeping with what turned out to be a very small and difficult target.

Except for the return element, Hayabusa has been a stunning success, and I hope we don't see the mission downplayed a la Nozomi.

Bob Shaw

Posted by: MahFL Dec 17 2005, 08:11 PM

"Except for the return element, Hayabusa has been a stunning success, and I hope we don't see the mission downplayed a la Nozomi. "

I disagree, so far its robot missed the asteroid, they did not know it had touched down, they don't know if they have any samples, and its out of control and pretty much disabled, it will be a miricle if it ever makes it back to earth, which I doubt, it'll proberbly die in the cold of space.

Thats IMHO.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Dec 17 2005, 09:18 PM

Well, it did everything NEAR did on only about 2/3 of the money, which is not to be sneezed at -- especially since it gave us nice comparative data on another asteroid. Unfortunately, it now looks as though everything it tried to do BEYOND what NEAR did will be a washout.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Dec 17 2005, 10:04 PM

QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Dec 17 2005, 10:18 PM)
Well, it did everything NEAR did on only about 2/3 of the money, which is not to be sneezed at -- especially since it gave us nice comparative data on another asteroid.  Unfortunately, it now looks as though everything it tried to do BEYOND what NEAR did will be a washout.
*


Bruce:

o It used an ion engine operationally in deep space
o Made use of sophisticated auto-nav and rendezvous systems
o Demonstrated close-in maneuvers in multiple ways

And performed a NEAR-like mission, too!

All in all, a helluva mission!

Bob Shaw

Posted by: Holder of the Two Leashes Dec 18 2005, 02:05 AM

QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Dec 17 2005, 03:18 PM)
Well, it did everything NEAR did on only about 2/3 of the money
*


Hayabusa had no gamma ray spectrometer, and no magnetometer. To my knowlege, Hayabusa did not return surface pictures of Itokawa as detailed as the final pictures of Eros from NEAR. And while touch-and-go landings are impressive, orbiting small irregular bodies - which Hayabusa never did - is pretty impressive, too.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Dec 18 2005, 03:11 AM

Let me amend: ALMOST everything. (Its best photos of Itokawa's surface were as high-resolution as NEAR's best photos of Eros' surface -- and its maneuvers around the asteroid were at least as intricate as NEAR's.)

Posted by: tedstryk Dec 18 2005, 04:11 AM

QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Dec 17 2005, 09:18 PM)
Well, it did everything NEAR did on only about 2/3 of the money, which is not to be sneezed at -- especially since it gave us nice comparative data on another asteroid.  Unfortunately, it now looks as though everything it tried to do BEYOND what NEAR did will be a washout.
*


It also gave us closeup data on a class of world that, other than Galileo's glimpses of Dactyl, we had never seen close up. A very important mission. I must admit that I have no confidence now that it will return to earth. My hope is that it will regain orientation long enough to transmit the data (and possibly more images) from its last landing attempt.

Posted by: odave Dec 18 2005, 08:13 PM

And also remember that this is primarily an engineering mission, and as such even the failures are valuable. I'm sure JAXA/ISAS is keeping a list of what went right and wrong. Hopefully backup reaction wheels are near the top under "what to do better next time"

Posted by: hugh Dec 19 2005, 12:30 AM

QUOTE (Holder of the Two Leashes @ Dec 18 2005, 02:05 AM)
To my knowlege, Hayabusa did not return surface pictures of Itokawa as detailed as the final pictures of Eros from NEAR. 
*

http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/j/snews/2005/1117.shtml claimed a resolution of 1.5 - 2.0 cm a pixel for the closest image obtained by Hayabusa. NEAR Shoemaker’s last image had a resolution of about 1.1cm, but covered a smaller area, and had about 1/8 the number of pixels that were in the Hayabusa image.

Posted by: edstrick Dec 19 2005, 07:00 AM

Hayabusa returned a huge amount of infrared spectrometer data. The NEAR instrument failed early in the mission, and the high-orbit data (as I recall) didn't tell much about surface composition variation, as it was mostly unresolved. The X-Ray composition data may be significantly better than NEAR's, but published data in science result papers will tell.

Posted by: lyford Dec 19 2005, 07:02 AM

QUOTE (deglr6328 @ Dec 17 2005, 12:52 AM)
Heathens! How dare you try to explain away Hayabusa's divine epicycles as a mere illusion of refrence point!!  tongue.gif
*

Well - I think Hayabusa's epicycles ARE part of a divine plan - from the http://www.jaxa.jp/index_e.html it appears no one less than The Pope himself is working on their Vision:


I mean, who else besides Elvis wears all white?

And while we're at it, does anyone else think Harrison Schmitt is slowly morphing into http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/history/VonBraun/vonbraun-portrait.gif

As for Hayabusa being an engineering mission, http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/enterp/missions/hayabusa/today.shtml only weighted science observations as 50 points out of 500 total for mission success. Though it does appear that some encounter data has been useful, that still leaves :

3. Touch-down and Sample
4. Capsule Recovered
5. Sample obtained for Analysis

as unfulfilled criteria. Without 4 and 5, we may never really know if 3 was accomplished it seems. Space science can't be done on the cheap, not even by the Japanese.

Posted by: The Messenger Dec 19 2005, 03:33 PM

Does anyone have any insight into why reaction wheels have been such a bug-a-boo? I know, from my own work with inductive circuits in a vacuum, there are always serious overheating issues when radiation is the only way to disappate heat energy. Are the reaction wheels being driven to greater loads than expected?

Posted by: Holder of the Two Leashes Dec 19 2005, 05:32 PM

QUOTE (edstrick @ Dec 19 2005, 01:00 AM)
Hayabusa returned a huge amount of infrared spectrometer data.  The NEAR instrument failed early in the mission, and the high-orbit data (as I recall) didn't tell much about surface composition variation, as it was mostly unresolved.  The X-Ray composition data may be significantly better than NEAR's, but published data in science result papers will tell.
*


The NIS instrument on NEAR returned three solid months worth of data from Eros before it failed. At the time, it was in a 50 km circular orbit, and able to resolve a spot 330x650 meters. This is 1 to 2 percent the length of Eros, so it was resolving the asteroid just fine. The reason it didn't show much surface variation is because, as this instrument discovered, there was no significate variation to report. The NIS also made significant contributions to studying the spectra of asteroid 253 Mathilde and comet Hyakutake.

I'll concede the point made by Hugh on the picture resolution.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Dec 19 2005, 07:19 PM

Even if Hayabusa only returned a quarter of NEAR's data volume (and I'm not suggesting I know what the fraction would be) - it's still important because it's a different world. We now have a very nice new data set for Itokawa which we didn't have before, so that's good. I absolutely agree JAXA's efforts are underfunded, but that's a political issue for Japan to resolve itself.

Actually, I think JAXA hurt itself a bit in its list of mission objectives. They assigned points to each mission phase, but they were too much weighted towards the final stages. I would have weighted them more heavily for the work done up to now, so that a more substantial degree of success would be shown today. The remote sensing was very valuable. Then the sample return would be 'icing on the cake' if it could be pulled off.

Ahh... I can almost hear the sound of the milk of human kindness sloshing around in me today. 'tis the season... I guess.

Phil

Posted by: edstrick Dec 19 2005, 07:38 PM

Holder of the Two Leashes:
"The reason it didn't show much surface variation is because, as this instrument discovered, there was no significate variation to report. "

I remain unconvinced of that. The areas of greatest color and albedo variation, or features where composition variations might be expected, were generally well below 1/2 km in size. I'm specifically referring to the high albedo steep slopes inside the freshest craters and the small, slightly darker than general regolith smooth "ponds" in crater bottoms.

I note that the camera, which had a TINY CCD detector with non-square pixels and high noise levels (obvious in low-contrast stretched images of a high contrast target) had real trouble seeing color variations, but they were there once enough pixels on a target were averaged.

Global color variations are near zero, but weak local ones, mostly on 100 or 50 meter scales and smaller are present. I expect/suspect similar ones were present in infrared wavelengths but were undetected due to resolution and possible signal/noise factors.

Posted by: ljk4-1 Dec 19 2005, 07:43 PM

Would it have been easier to have Hayabusa touch down on several different places on Itokawa to take images and data, rather than have brought Minerva along to do that job?

Or even just one stationary lander to leave on the planetoid?

Posted by: RNeuhaus Dec 19 2005, 07:51 PM

Minerva would do much better the job with imaging and temperature than Hayabusa but due to a bad luck it has gone away forewer. Hayabusa ANC wide camera is not designed to take close pictures but unless up to 50 meters from Itokawa.

Hence, Hayabusa has no legs to sit on Hayabusa.

The initial mission, JAXA took this as an engineering mission with much greater points (see the Lyford's previous comments) than the scientific mission.

Rodolfo

Posted by: Holder of the Two Leashes Dec 19 2005, 08:54 PM

QUOTE (edstrick @ Dec 19 2005, 01:38 PM)
I note that the camera, which had a TINY CCD detector with non-square pixels and high noise levels (obvious in low-contrast stretched images of a high contrast target) had real trouble seeing color variations, but they were there once enough pixels on a target were averaged.

Global color variations are near zero, but weak local ones, mostly on 100 or 50 meter scales and smaller are present.  I expect/suspect similar ones were present in infrared wavelengths but were undetected due to resolution and possible signal/noise factors.
*


I misunderstood you completely. I thought you were saying that the NIS could not resolve any part of Eros. One theory about part of the variation you're talking about is that the color differences are due to the fresh material being "unweathered".

One other thing I don't understand, though, is what your whole point is. Are you saying NEAR should have been put off for five years in order to get more advanced infrared detector technology? Or perhaps you are saying the United States should have scuttled the NEAR and Deep Space 1 programs, waited for some other nation (perhaps Japan) to fly both a dedicated asteroid mission and ion engine driven spacecraft first, and then build our own programs on their experience more cheaply?

Posted by: Joffan Dec 19 2005, 10:31 PM

QUOTE (Holder of the Two Leashes @ Dec 19 2005, 02:54 PM)
One other thing I don't understand, though, is what your whole point is.  Are you saying NEAR should have been put off for five years in order to get more advanced infrared detector technology?  Or perhaps you are saying the United States should have scuttled the NEAR and Deep Space 1 programs, waited for some other nation (perhaps Japan) to fly both a dedicated asteroid mission and ion engine driven spacecraft first, and then build our own programs on their experience more cheaply?
*
I thought that the general mood of the board, the spirit of this thread, was that Hayabusa is a success of comparable magnitude to NEAR even without the sample return. It seemed to me that it is you that has a point to make, Holder, to whit that NEAR was hugely better than Hayabusa. Your brinkmanship in suggesting that the participants here would like to see any exploration programs whatsoever scuttled, no matter the host nation, is political posturing.

Posted by: Holder of the Two Leashes Dec 19 2005, 11:45 PM

QUOTE (Joffan @ Dec 19 2005, 04:31 PM)
I thought that the general mood of the board, the spirit of this thread, was that Hayabusa is a success of comparable magnitude to NEAR even without the sample return.
*


The general sense of the spirit I was picking up was Hayabusa was the equal of NEAR for less money, or that it actually accomplished far more in certain areas such as infrared remote sensing. Hayabusa had the advantage of superior technology and the prior experience of NEAR to draw on in making it's specs for it's instrumentation, along with all the other flight operations planning.

QUOTE (Joffan @ Dec 19 2005, 04:31 PM)
It seemed to me that it is you that has a point to make, Holder, to whit that NEAR was hugely better than Hayabusa. Your brinkmanship in suggesting that the participants here would like to see any exploration programs whatsoever scuttled, no matter the host nation, is political posturing.
*


Your opinions about my post are duly noted, Joffan. Thank you very much.

There is no doubt that Hayabusa has made a significant contribution to the study of NEOs, and has paved the way for more successful missions in the future, which the Japanese by all rights should be in the forefront of pursuing.

I earlier made a rather snide comment in one posting about the possibility of what kind of sample Hayabusa would be bringing back. This was during a time of frustration over all the problems it was having. I also earlier voted on a poll in this forum on whether Hayabusa would succeed in returning to earth with a sample. I voted "no". I'm more confident in that vote than ever. I trust most of you (certainly not all of you) will believe me when I say I will take no joy in it if I turn out to be right, and would be happy to be wrong.

Posted by: lyford Dec 20 2005, 02:43 AM

And NEAR never found a http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.isas.jaxa.jp%2Fj%2Fsnews%2F2005%2F1110_hayabusa.shtml&langpair=ja%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools, either. tongue.gif
I, too, hope to be wrong, but I don't hold much hope for our little friend. Let us hope that the engineering lessons JAXA has learned include what to do and what NOT to do in the future.

Posted by: tedstryk Dec 20 2005, 05:34 AM

QUOTE (Holder of the Two Leashes @ Dec 19 2005, 05:32 PM)
The NIS instrument on NEAR returned three solid months worth of data from Eros before it failed.  At the time, it was in a 50 km circular orbit, and able to resolve a spot 330x650 meters.  This is 1 to 2 percent the length of Eros, so it was resolving the asteroid just fine.  The reason it didn't show much surface variation is because, as this instrument discovered, there was no significate variation to report.  The NIS also made significant contributions to studying the spectra of asteroid 253 Mathilde and comet Hyakutake.

I'll concede the point made by Hugh on the picture resolution.
*


Also, it mapped the whole asteroid except those parts that were seasonally in shadow. And, most importantly, it lasted as long as it was designed to last - had NEAR not arrived late, the nominal mission would have been over by the time it failed.

Posted by: edstrick Dec 20 2005, 09:31 AM

Holder of the Two Leashes:
"...One other thing I don't understand, though, is what your whole point is. ..."

I guess my points is that NEAR was the first of the Smaller, Cheaper, Faster, Better missions, but there is an ongoing debate on whether it was even good enough to accomplish what I thought was it's primary mission objective: determining whether S-type asteroids are or are not the parent bodies of ordinary chondrite meteorites. While the indications of a space-weathering modified surface were at least somewhat expected to cause potential problems in linking the two, the mission that was flown carried instruments that simply did not have the signal-to-noise ratio AND the resolution to clearly sort out what appear to be end-members of the weathering sequence. It was good, but like Boris, it wasn't good-enough.

Where NEAR really shined is in photo-geology, where it mostly made up for it's dinky camera with scads and scads of images that can be mosaiced into global coverage, and revolutionized our understanding of geologic processes on asteroids.

Posted by: JRehling Dec 20 2005, 04:43 PM

Both missions were successful. Note that they were quite different operationally in that NEAR orbited Eros, while Hayabusa more or less "escorted" Itokawa, and so far as I have seen, ended up with mainly high phase angle images. Of course, this was part of the mission design.

I would think that in retrospect, one might try to emulate NEAR again staying rather close to the mission's goals/money ratio, whereas Hayabusa was a bit too far over the edge for a novel spacecraft... perhaps with legacy components a future mission could be as ambitious and as cheap, but clearly the mission had more than one failure to execute -- the blessing is that it suceeded in every way needed to produce good science. Was it by design or luck that the "optional" portions of the mission were the ones to fail? Contrast Nozomi, which had lots of systems operational, but the one that failed to execute meant no Mars encounter at all.

NEAR had the advantage of treating Eros like it was a planet, but alternately easier (since light thrusters could perform the manuevers) and harder (strange gravity field made it). Hayabusa had a different challenge, and one felt as though it was awkwardly dancing with the asteroid. We can divide future asteroid missions between those that can orbit their worlds and those that must undertake many, frequent propulsive manuevers to execute. Given speed-of-light time, an autonomous system that was foolproof in gracefully dancing with its target would be a tremendous accomplishment.

One accomplishment of Hayabusa was in showing us an entirely new kind of world, at the smallest-yet end of the spectrum, whereas Eros looks on the whole like Gaspra, and is not too different from Phobos, the first "small" world seen by spacecraft. In a sense, Hayabusa "finished" the size spectrum, because yet smaller "worlds" are likely to be boulder heaps like Hayabusa in every way but the reading on the tape measure -- Hayabusa is clearly at the point where gravity ceases to rework the "world" in any way except to hold it together and pool its dust.

Posted by: Holder of the Two Leashes Dec 20 2005, 07:29 PM

QUOTE (edstrick @ Dec 20 2005, 03:31 AM)
I guess my points is that NEAR was the first of the Smaller, Cheaper, Faster, Better missions, but there is an ongoing debate on whether it was even good enough to accomplish what I thought was it's primary mission objective: determining whether S-type asteroids are or are not the parent bodies of ordinary chondrite meteorites. 
*


Hmmm. Okay.

You'll please forgive my earlier lashing out. NEAR was a mission I had a great fondness for. I perceived some slights directed at John Hopkins APL and the NEAR team, whom I thought pulled off a remarkable mission given the resources at hand, and reacted defensively. I believe the merits of Hayabusa can stand on their own without much comparision to specific previous missions, but rather what was gained in comparison to everything we had before.

NEAR was able to narrow things down. Eros appears to be a type L or type LL chondrite. Bear in mind, no one had examined an asteriod from this close a range before, and it was inevitable that a lot of lessons were going to be learned on how asteroid missions should be conducted in the future.

Persons close to the Hayabusa team have reported in here before, and I would love to hear what they think in regards to how NEAR influenced the planning for their mission. In the meantime, here is what I can note ostensively -

Some of the most interesting and intriguing images from Eros were the very last ones at closest range. It's obvious the Hayabusa team wanted very close and very detailed images from several points on Itokawa, hence Minerva.

The X-ray spectrometer on NEAR performed brilliantly. A similar device was included on Hayabusa.

The gamma ray spectrometer on NEAR was a real problem child. It never got the data it was designed for until after they pulled off that unlikely landing on Eros, and it had sat there for a week. Hayabusa didn't carry any similar instrument.

The magnetometer on NEAR never detected any intrinsic magnetic signature at EROS. When it failed to do so even after the landing, it was quickly and unceremoniously turned off. Hayabusa carried no magnetometer.

The NIS performed well according to it's design. As you have pointed out so well, edstrick, the reality of Eros was that more resolution, even from it's planned 35 km orbital results, would have been highly desirable. Hayabusa carried an instrument with improved resolution.

After all was said and done, the comparison of Eros with meterorite samples was not definitive. Hayabusa bringing back two samples from Itokawa would absolutely NAIL the comparisons, along with much else.

Part of what I was trying to allude to with my "scraping NEAR and Deep Space 1" remarks was to point out that Hayabusa would have been a very differently designed, and undoubtedly more costly, mission had it not had previous experience to draw on. Part of what was learned this time around was that Eros and Itokawa were more different than expected, which created some problems for Hayabusa's landing attempts. This points to a need for a CONTOUR type mission to visit several different NEAs.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Dec 20 2005, 10:12 PM

Hawaii's Jeffrey Bell has been telling me for years that remote sensing -- even with high-quality instruments -- simply isn't adequate to answer the "ordinary chondrite" question, and that a sample return will be necessary. The evidence seems to be growing that he's right -- simple element measurements and near-IR spectra don't seem to be adequate to nail it -- and this is one reason why I regard "Hera" as one of the more likely candidates for selection in the next Discovery AO.

Posted by: The Messenger Dec 21 2005, 02:34 PM

QUOTE (edstrick @ Dec 20 2005, 02:31 AM)
Where NEAR really shined is in photo-geology, where it mostly made up for it's dinky camera with scads and scads of images that can be mosaiced into global coverage, and revolutionized our understanding of geologic processes on asteroids.
*

Can you point me to a good paper on this?

Posted by: Phil Stooke Dec 30 2005, 06:32 PM

I just noticed this, though it may not be brand new. I don't think I had seen the false-color view at the bottom of the first page before this.

Phil

http://www.jaxa.jp/news_topics/column/special-4/index_e.html

Posted by: ljk4-1 Jan 3 2006, 05:11 PM

Maybe if we wait a few million years, we'll get all the samples of Itokawa we will ever need - or want:

Smooth Sections on Asteroid Itokawa

Credit & Copyright: ISAS, JAXA

Explanation: Why are parts of this asteroid's surface so smooth? No one is yet sure, but it may have to do with the dynamics of an asteroid that is a loose pile of rubble rather than a solid rock. The unusual asteroid is currently being visited by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa that is documenting its unusual structure and mysterious lack of craters. Last month, Hayabusa actually touched down on one of the smooth patches, dubbed the MUSES Sea, and collected soil samples that will eventually be returned to Earth for analysis. Unfortunately, the robot Hayabusa craft has been experiencing communications problems and so its departure for Earth has been delayed until 2007.

Computer simulations show that 500-meter asteroid Itokawa may impact the Earth within the next few million years.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap051228.html

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Jan 11 2006, 05:53 PM

From the January 12, 2006, issue of Nature: "http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7073/edsumm/e060112-05.html."

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Jan 11 2006, 06:30 PM

QUOTE (AlexBlackwell @ Jan 11 2006, 05:53 PM)
From the January 12, 2006, issue of Nature: "http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7073/edsumm/e060112-05.html."
*

Here's an excerpt from the article that, I believe, sums it up:

QUOTE
“Maybe sometimes Japan tries to do too much for its resources,” says Andrew Cheng, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and a member of Hayabusa’s science team. “I’m happy to see very brave decisions and to launch very complicated missions. All that is good,” adds Cheng. “But they cannot fail every time either."

Posted by: Phil Stooke Feb 12 2006, 12:17 AM

Coming back here after a hiatus... since Volcanopele pointed out in another thread that there are good abstracts on Hayabusa results at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference:

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/program.pdf

(near the bottom- check both the Hayabusa session and the posters)

Yes, there are, and they illustrate how successful JAXA has been in the remote sensing side of the mission. Some papers should appear in Science soon.

I went through all the abstracts and compiled a list of all the publicly announced feature names. None are official yet. Here they are shown over a montage of images which were released earlier, courtesy JAXA/ISAS. I look forward to seeing the first map of Itokawa.

Phil


Posted by: BruceMoomaw Feb 12 2006, 06:03 AM

Oh, yes. Two particularly striking photos that I've never seen before:

(1) http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/2463.pdf (Fig. 3): The closest photo taken yet of an asteroid's surface -- with a resolution of only 6 mm/pixel -- showing the surface of the "Muses Sea" where Hayabusa landed for its sampling runs, and revealing that the "pond" is filled not with fine dust but with coarse gravel. (The abstract reveals that the gravel gets gradually and progressively smaller as one moves toward the center of the pond. Definitely size-sorting by seismic shaking.)

(2) http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/1022.pdf (Fig. 1), making dramatically clear just how incredibly small Itokawa is compared with Eros. The similarity of their surface processes is thus even more striking.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Feb 12 2006, 07:24 AM

QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Feb 12 2006, 06:03 AM)
Oh, yes. Two particularly striking photos that I've never seen before:

(1) http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2006/pdf/2463.pdf (Fig. 3): The closest photo taken yet of an asteroid's surface -- with a resolution of only 6 mm/pixel -- showing the surface of the "Muses Sea" where Hayabusa landed for its sampling runs, and revealing that the "pond" is filled not with fine dust but with coarse gravel. (The abstract reveals that the gravel gets gradually and progressively smaller as one moves toward the center of the pond. Definitely size-sorting by seismic shaking.)
*
Good find Bruce.
For a resolution of 6mm per pixel in this image (which according to their scale is about 6.5 meters wide) the original before re-scaling for the pdf it was extracted from, would have been about 1110 pixels wide.

The final NEAR photo was 537 pixels over a similar field of view (6 meters), so the Hayabusa image is nearly twice the resolution of NEAR's best of (11 mmpp).

 

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Feb 12 2006, 08:58 AM

The article remarks (though with what evidence I don't know; it's a reference to some upcoming reports on Hayabusa's findings in "Science") that the regolith on Eros' surface is finer than that on Itokawa -- and in fact a comparison of those two photos suggests just that. Is it possible that this is because Itokawa's still lower gravity means that meteoroid impacts kick the smallest particles completely off that asteroid's surface, whereas most of them tend to fall back onto Eros?

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Feb 12 2006, 04:34 PM

QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Feb 12 2006, 08:58 AM) *
The article remarks (though with what evidence I don't know; it's a reference to some upcoming reports on Hayabusa's findings in "Science") that the regolith on Eros' surface is finer than that on Itokawa -- and in fact a comparison of those two photos suggests just that. Is it possible that this is because Itokawa's still lower gravity means that meteoroid impacts kick the smallest particles completely off that asteroid's surface, whereas most of them tend to fall back onto Eros?

That's a good possibility. Interestingly the article talks about "coarse gravel". Coarse indeed. Based on that 1-meter scale, I'd say those particles are the size of baseballs, small oranges or perhaps eggs. So if your theory holds, my guess is that the small particles "kicked off" include everything we think of as dust, sand, AND gravel. This could also end speculation of whether or not Haybusa captured anything. If there was no fine regolith on Itokawa then the projectile would have simply bounced off the more solid "basket full of oranges" that constitutes Itokowa's surface.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Feb 13 2006, 12:11 AM

I think it likely that the bullet -- if it DID fire -- probably did kick at least a few small bits of rock into the sample container; the Japanese had the foresight to lab-test it on mostly-rock surfaces as well as loose ones. And of course Earth labs can now do stupendous things with very tiny samples, as Stardust will shortly prove again. But this does indicate the superiority of the alternate sampling system proposed for the "Hera" near-Earth asteroid Discovery proposal. Namely, a bunch of pads, each one pressed into the surface and coated with a 1-cm thick layer of squishy silicone grease -- which in lab tests very nicely picks up 0.1 kg of debris up to the size of small pebbles, without contaminating it for the purposes of laboratory study.

Posted by: djellison Feb 16 2006, 03:48 PM

From the LPSC papers - a stereo pair that I've anaglyphed, simulated from LIDAR I believe..

 

Posted by: Phil Stooke Feb 16 2006, 05:36 PM

Very nice, Doug.

I was talking to Gaskell about this - they have lots of small maps but they are not sure how to combine them into a global map. The problem (illustrated nicely in some of the abstracts) is that one area (Shirikami) is such a steep slope that a radius from the centre of mass passes out of the surface below Shirikami, then hits the surface again at the top of Shirikami. Normally, we associate one elevation value with each lat/long location. But here there are three separate points on the surface lying along one radius. This problem occurs to a minor extent on Eros, and might on Toutatis - and DOES on Kleopatra. The solution I have suggested is to use a non-radial lat/long system - maybe cylindrical, with a point being defined by its azimuth around the axis plus its position along the axis. The end of the cylinder need special attention, though. Another approach is to map the surface onto the convex hull of the shape, not its true shape, which removes the problem.

Phil

Posted by: nop Feb 20 2006, 10:42 AM

QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Feb 17 2006, 02:36 AM) *
The problem (illustrated nicely in some of the abstracts) is that one area (Shirikami) is such a steep slope that a radius from the centre of mass passes out of the surface below Shirikami, then hits the surface again at the top of Shirikami.


FYI, It's not "Shirikami", but "Shirakami" wink.gif Please check the LPSC abstracts to make sure.
"Shirikami" looks so funny to us because "Shiri" in Japanese means "buttocks". tongue.gif

Anyway, thanks for your fine and exciting montage map of Itokawa!

Posted by: TheChemist Feb 20 2006, 11:09 AM

QUOTE (nop @ Feb 20 2006, 12:42 PM) *
FYI, It's not "Shirikami", but "Shirakami" wink.gif Please check the LPSC abstracts to make sure.
"Shirikami" looks so funny to us because "Shiri" in Japanese means "buttocks". tongue.gif

Hmm, that explains the steep slopes... tongue.gif

Edited to remove tasteless comment, apologies ...

Posted by: Phil Stooke Feb 20 2006, 01:01 PM

Thanks, nop, for pointing out the Shirakami problem. I will fix it and replace the image very soon.

Phil

Posted by: Phil Stooke Feb 21 2006, 12:28 AM

Here is a corrected version of the Itokawa names image.

I'm grateful to nop for correcting me on this. There is a bit more to the story as well. Another person who saw the image queried the name I had spelled incorrectly, pointing out the humorous and/or unfortunate interpretation of it. So naturally, instead of checking with the LPSC abstracts, the sources for my names, I simply googled the name as I had originally spelled it. And wouldn't you know, there were lots of pages with the name spelled in that wrong way, referring to a mountain or mountain range in Japan. So I assumed the wrong spelling was in fact correct. Well, let that be a lesson to me never to rely only on Google, which is just as effective at finding mistakes as facts.

Anyway, I do hope we will soon see some official Japanese maps of this lovely little world.

Phil


Posted by: nop Feb 21 2006, 04:52 PM

Thank you for your quick revision, Phil.

I also tried googling "Shirikami". Most of the pages are intended to refer "Shirakami mountain" as one of UNESCO world heritage, but I found that there really exists a place named "Shirikami"! it was a new discovery to me biggrin.gif

FYI, here are origins of the names (it's just my speculation and not the official announce of JAXA/ISAS):

Muses Sea: MUSES-C and greek goddess
Little Woomera: the place in Australia for capsule recovery
Uchinoura: Uchinoura Space Center. Hayabusa was launched from here
Sagamihara: the name of the city where ISAS is located
Yoshinodai: the name of the town where ISAS is located
Fuchinobe: the name of the nearest station to ISAS
Tsukuba: where the JAXA Space Center (old NASDA) is located
Usuda: JAXA Deep Space Center with 64m antenna
Yatsugatake: A mountain near Usuda
Shirakami: I'm not sure but it might be a mountain range near JAXA/ISAS Testing Center
Kamisunagawa: there was a facility for zero-gravity experiment (now there isn't)
Komaba: ISAS was here a decade ago
pencil boulder: the first Japanese rocket was called "pencil rocket", created by Dr. Hideo Itokawa

Posted by: ljk4-1 Feb 22 2006, 09:11 PM

The Hayabusa mission and its planetoid target are the cover
subjects of the latest The Planetary Society The Planetary Report:

Hayabusa: A Daring Sample Return Mission

Japan's ambitious mission to land on an asteroid, collect samples, and return them to Earth has had its ups and downs. The tiny but robust spacecraft, with its determined ground crew, worked through problem after problem on its way to sample asteroid Itokawa. In the end, the "little spacecraft that could" revealed for the first time the rocky surface of Itokawa, dropped a memento from Earth onto its surface, and may have collected a sample of surface dust to return to Earth. Although we don't yet know if engineers will be able to guide the spacecraft back to Earth for the sample return, the Hayabusa mission team has much to be proud of. Journalist A.J.S. Rayl has been reporting on the spacecraft since before its launch in 2003. Here, she tells the story of Hayabusa's harrowing adventure.

http://www.planetary.org/programs/planetary_report.html

Posted by: Bob Shaw Mar 7 2006, 09:03 PM

JAXA has been in touch with Hayabusa, but the situation is far from resolved.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11713182/

(sigh)

Bob Shaw

Posted by: foe Mar 8 2006, 08:41 AM

ISAS
http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/snews/2006/0308.shtml


LbyD,Matsuura's blog (Translation ver.)
http://jspace.misshie.jp/index.php?LbyD%2F20060307-1
http://jspace.misshie.jp/index.php?LbyD%2F20060307-2

Posted by: Bob Shaw Apr 2 2006, 11:53 PM

Interesting article at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1107 - see also NASAWatch for a great comparison between Itokawa and the ISS!

Bob Shaw

Posted by: paxdan Apr 3 2006, 11:49 AM

QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Apr 3 2006, 12:53 AM) *
Interesting article at http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1107 - see also NASAWatch for a great comparison between Itokawa and the ISS!

Bob Shaw

Here is the Link to the http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2006/04/how_big_small_t.html it really is a fantastic graphic and gives a real sense of the size of the thing.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Apr 30 2006, 02:35 PM

It turns out that one of the new LPSC abstracts (#1575) by the Hayabusa team confirms that they think the lack of fine soil particles on Itokawa (as compared to Eros) is simply because of the asteroid's extremely low gravity: "Due to the low escape velocity of Itokawa (i.e., 10-20 cm/s), most of the fine ejecta in cratering having higher velocities
would have easily escaped from the surface. Only larger fragments with lower velocities than this escape velocity could have remained on the surface. This may explain why Itokawa’s surface has relatively small areas covered with regolith but is dominated by numerous exposed boulders."

This would presumably apply not only to ejecta directly kicked off by the surface by impacts, but to seismic shaking produced all over the asteroid by a large impact on it.

There is currently some belief that Itokawa's peculiar shape, which has been interpreted as being due to two rubble piles that collided with each other and stuck -- since any two such piles should have hit at such a high speed that they would have splattered and dispersed instead. Is it possible that Itokawa's shape -- a bifurcated lump, bent at the junction point -- is really just due to its being a single rubble pile that got a large impact on one side which splattered material away on that side and bent the entire pile?

Posted by: Bob Shaw Apr 30 2006, 03:48 PM

QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Apr 30 2006, 03:35 PM) *
Is it possible that Itokawa's shape -- a bifurcated lump, bent at the junction point -- is really just due to its being a single rubble pile that got a large impact on one side which splattered mateial away on that side and bent the entire pile?


Bruce:

I wonder whether, over a very long period of time, a phenomenon similar to 'frost-heave' might occur - let's call it 'rubble creep'. Differential heating of rocks might lead to a verrrrrrry slow movement (perhaps after an impact gives everything a good shake) leading gradually to an ever-more deformed shape until some sort of equalisation of all the forces was reached.

If other rubble piles have the same sort of shape then it might be due to some such cause rather than a single event (I don't like single events, and much prefer long, slow processes!).

Bob Shaw

Posted by: Phil Stooke May 17 2006, 02:20 PM

Upcoming symposium on Hayabusa...

http://kumano.u-aizu.ac.jp/hayabusa_symp2006/

Phil

Posted by: Shadowband May 31 2006, 11:25 PM

JAXA Succeeded in Hayabusa Probe's Ion Engine Ingnition Test

JAXA succeeded in ion engine ignition test of Hayabusa probe,
which tried rock sampling from asteroid Itokawa. The acceleration
was fine. JAXA will start ion engines in next January and aim to
return to the Earth in June, 2010.

JAXA tried the test using two of four ion engines. "Return flight
is possible if two ion engines work", Dr. Jun'ichiro Kawaguchi
of ISAS/JAXA said.

From Mainichi Shimbun Press (in Japanese) 5-31-2006 19:07 JST
http://www.mainichi-msn.co.jp/science/kagaku/news/20060601k0000m040040000c.html

Posted by: helvick May 31 2006, 11:36 PM

QUOTE (Shadowband @ Jun 1 2006, 12:25 AM) *
JAXA Succeeded in Hayabusa Probe's Ion Engine Ingnition Test

Now that's good news. Still rooting for " It is quick the ぶ". smile.gif

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Jun 1 2006, 02:14 AM

Stay tuned tomorrow (June 1, 2006) for more Hayabusa science news biggrin.gif

Posted by: RogueEngineer Jun 1 2006, 02:31 PM

QUOTE (Shadowband @ Jun 1 2006, 08:25 AM) *
JAXA Succeeded in Hayabusa Probe's Ion Engine Ingnition Test

And here's a official press release from JAXA:
http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/snews/2006/0601.shtml

Cheers,

Hideo Fukumori (aka Rogue Engineer)

Posted by: odave Jun 1 2006, 03:15 PM

Great news! What a ride this must have been for the team, going from exhilaration to frustration to despair to guarded hopefulness. My hat is off to them for sticking with the mission in the face of severe adversity. Good luck in bringing the wounded Falcon home, guys smile.gif

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Jun 1 2006, 03:54 PM

QUOTE (AlexBlackwell @ Jun 1 2006, 02:14 AM) *
Stay tuned tomorrow (June 1, 2006) for more Hayabusa science news biggrin.gif

What I was alluding to above was that the http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol312/issue5778/index.dtl is a special issue entitled "http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol312/issue5778/index.dtl#special-issue."

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Jun 1 2006, 07:38 PM

QUOTE (AlexBlackwell @ Jun 1 2006, 03:54 PM) *
What I was alluding to above was that the http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol312/issue5778/index.dtl is a special issue entitled "http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol312/issue5778/index.dtl#special-issue."

Some related press releases:

http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2005-06/05-138.html

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-06/uom-fpo053006.php

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-06/aaft-aso052506.php

Posted by: SigurRosFan Jun 1 2006, 07:47 PM

... and:

- http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9257-rubbly-itokawa-revealed-as-impossible-asteroid.html

<< Nonetheless, Hayabusa's cameras reveal that some large boulders appear layered, "like you'd broken off a rock from the side of a river bed," he says. That suggests Itokawa's parent body was large enough to heat up at its centre and develop some internal structure, even if it wasn't large enough to melt. "There could have been hydrothermal processes conducting water around, similar to on Earth, where steam passes through rocks and alters their compositions," he told New Scientist. >>

Posted by: ljk4-1 Jun 1 2006, 07:48 PM

Why we need to explore space directly.

A quote from the previously posted article:

What they found was completely unexpected. "Five years ago, we thought that we would see a big chunk of monolithic rock, that something so small doesn't have the ability to hold onto any pieces," says Erik Asphaug, a planetary scientist at the University of California in Santa Cruz, US, who is not involved with the mission. "Everything we suspected about it turned out to be wrong."

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Jun 1 2006, 08:38 PM

QUOTE (AlexBlackwell @ Jun 1 2006, 03:54 PM) *
What I was alluding to above was that the http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol312/issue5778/index.dtl is a special issue entitled "http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol312/issue5778/index.dtl#special-issue."

For those of you with online access to Science, the papers are now available for download.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Jun 1 2006, 08:54 PM

I played around with Hayabusa images last year, and made this map file. I didn't post it at the time, to let the mission scientists publish something first. I think it's OK now. And I want to emphasize this is VERY approximate and poorly controlled. But it gives an indication of what a simple cylindrical projection global photomosaic of Hayabusa would look like. IAU north is at the top. The "head" is at the central (0) meridian. This would not be suitable for any scientific analysis.

Phil


Posted by: dilo Jun 1 2006, 09:19 PM

WOW, Phil! ohmy.gif
(and thanks, Alex)

Posted by: Phil Stooke Jun 5 2006, 09:26 PM

Here's a new set of presentation slides from JAXA - based on the Science results but a few extras.

Phil

http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/snews/2006/0602.shtml

Posted by: SigurRosFan Jun 6 2006, 11:10 AM

Thanks for posting, Phil. Very interesting ...

Formation of Itokawa:

Posted by: ugordan Jun 6 2006, 11:17 AM

There were not many (stretched?) color composites released so far, so that's why I found this one particularly interesting:


I hope posting the slide here doesn't break any of JAXA's copyright rules.

Posted by: mchan Jun 7 2006, 08:51 AM

Re: color composites. If I smear some vaseline on my glasses, I can even see the sea otter! smile.gif

Posted by: ljk4-1 Jun 8 2006, 02:14 AM

This Japanese Web site has artwork of the various stages of the Hayabusa
mission in detail, from liftoff to the return of its capsule to Earth in 2010:

http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/~beyond/gallery/forspace2.html

And if you scroll to the bottom of the page, you will also see what their
plans for a solar sail craft may look like.

Information on the Japanese solar sail is here:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=2290&view=findpost&p=42791

Posted by: Phil Stooke Jul 21 2006, 01:55 PM

Here:

http://kumano.u-aizu.ac.jp/hayabusa_symp2006/

is the abstract volume (PDF file) for the 2nd Hayabusa Symposium, just concluded. The link to the abstracts is half way down the page.

Phil

Posted by: djellison Jul 21 2006, 02:14 PM

From
Pg 18 - Size-frequency distribution of craters on Itokawa.
and
Pg 24 - Characterizing the Muses Sea Geology.

Great stuff smile.gif


 

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Jul 21 2006, 06:51 PM

QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Jul 21 2006, 03:55 AM) *
Here:

http://kumano.u-aizu.ac.jp/hayabusa_symp2006/

is the abstract volume (PDF file) for the 2nd Hayabusa Symposium, just concluded. The link to the abstracts is half way down the page.

Thanks for the link, Phil. I haven't been following the Hayubasa science results too closely.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Aug 14 2006, 07:16 PM

The journal http://www.terrapub.co.jp/journals/EPS/ has issued a http://www.terrapub.co.jp/journals/EPS/pdf/announce/58060793.pdf for special issue entitled "Itokawa-Hayabusa and beyond," currently projected to be published ca. January 2007.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Sep 6 2006, 07:10 PM

There's a new paper by Hiroi et al. in the September 7, 2006, issue of Nature. See the http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7107/edsumm/e060907-07.html for a synopsis and links.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Sep 8 2006, 08:54 PM

QUOTE (AlexBlackwell @ Sep 6 2006, 09:10 AM) *
There's a new paper by Hiroi et al. in the September 7, 2006, issue of Nature. See the http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7107/edsumm/e060907-07.html for a synopsis and links.

A related http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2006-07/06-019.html from Brown University.

Posted by: spdf Nov 11 2006, 03:28 AM

Here are some informations about the Hayabusa 2 and the Hayabusa Mark 2.

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/recon2006/pdf/3038.pdf

Posted by: nprev Nov 11 2006, 03:46 PM

Nice to see that JAXA apparently intends to soldier on after learning the lessons of H1. NEO exploration is economically & scientifically important.

Posted by: spdf Jan 11 2007, 01:01 PM

Hayabusa 2 doesn t look very good. If I understood the blogs correct, Jaxa needs 500 Million Yen (around 4,2 Million US-Dollar) or more in FY 2007 for starting it. However the Ministry of Finance gave only 50 Million Yen ... ... mad.gif blink.gif

Posted by: amezz Jan 17 2007, 11:41 AM

Is Matsuura really say (where in Internet?), that Hayabusa planning start the return to Earth at 10 Feb 2007. Look here (by Russian) http://www.novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=183633&highlight=#183633 M.b. it's a hoax?

Posted by: odave Jan 17 2007, 12:25 PM

From this page on the http://www.hayabusa.isas.jaxa.jp/e/index_42.html, they state March 2007 for starting home, but the Reference-2 image at the bottom of the page shows a date of February 10 (2007/2/10). That's probably where the poster on the Russian forum got that date. A http://www.hayabusa.isas.jaxa.jp/e/index_44.html states "early 2007", and the http://www.hayabusa.isas.jaxa.jp/e/index.html mentioned that the engine C test is planned for January 2007. I think that's about it for official news...

Posted by: helvick Jan 26 2007, 01:24 AM

I am very happy to see that http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000839/about our dear friend Hayabusa \ "It is quick the ぶ" .

There is still a long and difficult mission ahead but she is still alive and the team are bringing her home and I am very glad about that.






Posted by: nprev Jan 26 2007, 02:53 AM

Doesn't sound like it will be an easy trip at all, but glad they'll make the attempt. If nothing else, JAXA will learn some extremely valuable engineering lessons, and unfortunately the value of these too often seems to be directly proportional to the pain & effort. Best of luck, guys!

Posted by: mchan Jan 26 2007, 03:05 AM

Hayabusa is the little spacecraft that could. Broad ambitions, high risks, and relatively low funding. So go, Hayabusa, go!

Posted by: lyford Jan 26 2007, 04:07 AM

This would be amazing - I just hope she has better luck than Nozomi did with the salvage efforts smile.gif

Posted by: dvandorn Jan 26 2007, 04:17 AM

QUOTE (mchan @ Jan 25 2007, 09:05 PM) *
Hayabusa is the little spacecraft that could.

Hmmmm... she apparently failed in her primary mission, of getting a sample of the asteroid. She also failed to properly deploy her little lander. Half of her engines have failed, and it's still not a very good bet that she'll come home.

If that's your idea of a vehicle that "can," remind me not to buy a used car from you... biggrin.gif

-the other Doug

Posted by: tedstryk Jan 26 2007, 02:41 PM

Considering the fact that it was a test mission, and that it successfully reached the asteroid and returned a lot of fascinating data on a class of world never before observed at close range, I think the mission succeeded in a lot of ways. Its primary mission, however, wasn't science, but to test technology, and it definitely returned data that will help in designing future asteroid sample returns of this type. And it maybe, just maybe, will return with a tiny bit of material...unlikely, but not impossible. Also, had Minerva gone to its intended target, Nereus, which is somewhat larger than Itokawa, it would have had more forgiving margins (though still not very forgiving) on the issue of floating away.

Posted by: centsworth_II Jan 26 2007, 05:16 PM

QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jan 25 2007, 11:17 PM) *
If that's your idea of a vehicle that "can," remind me not to buy a used car from you... biggrin.gif


We don't know that Hayabusa failed to retrieve a sample. Even a few microscopic grains would be a scientific boon. Apart from that, much new, unique science has already been achieved. Add to that the ground-breaking testing -- under duress -- of new engineering systems and you have a craft that not only could, but DID do quite a bit to advance knowlege -- the goal of science after all. On a continuum from complete failure to complete success, I would already put Hayabusa past the halfway point toward the success end. Reaching Earth would push it that much more in that direction.

Posted by: amezz Jan 26 2007, 06:44 PM

Hayabusa update http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000839/

Posted by: Littlebit Jan 26 2007, 06:49 PM

QUOTE (centsworth_II @ Jan 26 2007, 10:16 AM) *
On a continuum from complete failure to complete success, I would already put Hayabusa past the halfway point toward the success end. Reaching Earth would push it that much more in that direction.

Your assessment is consistent with pre-launch mission metrics.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Jan 26 2007, 07:01 PM

QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jan 25 2007, 08:17 PM) *
she apparently failed in her primary mission, of getting a sample of the asteroid. She also failed to properly deploy her little lander. Half of her engines have failed, and it's still not a very good bet that she'll come home.

That's kind of like describing Galileo as "That craft that arrived at Jupiter several years late with a stuck HGA and burned up in Jupiter's atmosphere... or noting that the the MERs have "a stuck steering actuator, broken wheel motor, balky shoulder joint, and a heater that won't shut off."

You have left out the unique and valuable science results that Haybusa has returned and the countless obstacles that the team have overcome to keep the craft alive even now, all at an exceedingly low cost and with a minimal operating budget.

I'm forced to wonder if you would describe a beautiful morning sunrise, as "glaring sun in your eyes that creates a noisy racket of birds squawking."

Posted by: elakdawalla Jan 26 2007, 08:40 PM

We had two Hayabusa topics going, and the cross-posting was getting a bit confusing, so I moved all the recent discussions to this topic and closed the old "http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=870" topic down.

--Emily

Posted by: Phil Stooke Jan 26 2007, 09:40 PM

ElkGroveDan: "I'm forced to wonder if you would describe a beautiful morning sunrise, as "glaring sun in your eyes that creates a noisy racket of birds squawking." "

Or as Bertie Wooster might prefer, "like a slice of slightly underdone roast beef"

Phil

Posted by: NMRguy Jan 26 2007, 11:09 PM

QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jan 26 2007, 05:17 AM) *
Hmmmm... she apparently failed ...


This may have been touched on earlier, but Hayabusa has been every bit as successful as NEAR Shoemaker but with an even smaller budget. Both had a similar suite of instruments and have greatly expanded our knowledge of near-Earth asteroids. But NEAR's target was the (13×13×33km) 433 Eros as compared to Hayabusa's (0.53×0.29×0.21km) 25143 Itokawa. Even Comet Temple 1 is believed to be 7.6x4.9km.

If I remember correctly, NEAR had a few hiccups of its own, including a problem with its initial orbit insertion. It did finally close in on Eros, and it is still there today. Hayabusa on the other hand touched down on Itokawa and is now trying to make its way back home.

I will be the first to admit that Hayabusa has been as exciting as it has been frustrating. The mission objectives may have been too ambitious for the allotted budget, and the spacecraft seems to be held together by a shoestring, but you have to give it to the Japanese operators for getting as far as they have. And if they do somehow succeed in bringing a sample from Itokawa back to Earth, it will be the heist of the decade.

Posted by: dvandorn Jan 26 2007, 11:14 PM

Oh, I'm not saying that Hayabusa was a failure. Far from it. I'm just saying that to brand her "the little spacecraft that could" when she quite literally could *not* do several of the things she was designed to do is a little bit like calling Galileo a 100% successful mission. Or calling the Ranger program a resounding success because three of the nine spacecraft worked properly. Or like insisting that Deep Impact would have been a really great mission even if it hadn't managed to hit the comet with its impactor. Or like hailing the MERs as great successes even if they had never been able to roll off of their landers.

MGS was a spacecraft that could. So are the MERs. Each achieved all of its pre-flight mission objectives, and then some. Even though Hayabusa returned an awful lot of really good data and images, a lot of its major objectives weren't achieved. I was really looking forward to seeing data from Minerva, for example, and I'm still disappointed that the whole sequence got fouled up.

Hayabusa is at best a partially successful mission. I truly appreciate what it managed to accomplish but to hail it with such superlatives when it partially failed seems wrong to me.

-the other Doug

Posted by: tedstryk Jan 26 2007, 11:51 PM

Yes, Doug, but, with the exception of the early Rangers, the spacecrafts you list were science missions. In other words, their reason to be was science. Hayabusa was an engineering test. Sort of like DS-1, in the sense that any science return was gravy. But its main purpose was to test what did and didn't work so that future, larger science missions wouldn't fail. And it did that - showed a lot of what worked, and showed a lot of things that need to be changed and/or improved. Plus it returned a lot of great science, despite many setbacks that had the potential to be mission ending. And it just might return an asteroid sample. DS-1, while the Borrelly results were cool, never seemed as novel beyond the fact that it used an ion drive - comet and asteroid flybys had been done - but Hayabusa's science, both in what suceeded and what didn't, attempted a lot that was truely new, from landing ,to sample return, to studing such a tiny asteroid, to dropping target markers, to touching down and taking off again, to "hovering" with the asteroid (unlike NEAR, whose target was large enough to truly orbit). This makes it easy to forget that it was a test, and to think of it like Galileo or Deep Impact, whose primary purpose was science.

Posted by: mchan Jan 27 2007, 02:55 AM

I thought of Hayabusa as the little spacecraft that could primarily because of what it did as a relatively low cost program. I recall reading that the mission cost was about half that of NEAR, yet in a popular view, provided results of equal visibility. Hayabusa did not return as many images as NEAR to allow several detailed rotation movies to be made, but the views were spectacular nevertheless.

It was just the thought of the little one (relative to big ones like NASA Mars missions) succeeding or at least partially succeeding. The only comparison I can think of now is Beagle had it landed successfully and returned some data from the surface.

Posted by: nop Jan 30 2007, 04:59 PM

Good News: The capsule has been successfully closed toward the return trip.

This is just a summary. The press release is written in Japanese, and too long for me to translate tongue.gif
http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/j/snews/2007/0130.shtml

I'm glad to know that many guys here still remember and pay attention to Hayabusa !

Posted by: ustrax Jan 30 2007, 05:36 PM

QUOTE (nop @ Jan 30 2007, 04:59 PM) *
I'm glad to know that many guys here still remember and pay attention to Hayabusa !


Long live Hayabusa! smile.gif

Posted by: nop Jan 30 2007, 05:52 PM

QUOTE (ustrax @ Jan 31 2007, 02:36 AM) *
Long live Hayabusa! smile.gif

Wow, thanks ustrax! laugh.gif

English information about this news is also posted on JSpace:
http://jspace.misshie.jp/index.php?Isas%2F20070130

Posted by: NMRguy Jan 31 2007, 03:26 PM

QUOTE (mchan @ Jan 27 2007, 03:55 AM) *
I recall reading that the mission cost was about half that of NEAR, yet in a popular view, provided results of equal visibility.

Well, the best numbers that I can dig up put NEAR Shoemaker at $224 million (http://near.jhuapl.edu/intro/faq.html) and Hayabusa at $170 million (http://www.planetary.org/news/2005/1102_Hayabusa_Japans_Asteroid_Mission.html). Comparing just the total budgets, Hayabusa costs 76% of NEAR Shoemaker. Account for inflation and the numbers get a little more favorable with 64% (1996$224million = 2004$264.75million). This is not half the cost, but 2/3 still represents significant savings.

Posted by: lyford Jan 31 2007, 05:36 PM

QUOTE (ustrax @ Jan 30 2007, 09:36 AM) *
Long live Hayabusa! smile.gif

I raise a toast of http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=870&view=findpost&p=28508 to Hayabusa's safe return! biggrin.gif

Posted by: konangrit Feb 12 2007, 03:28 AM

QUOTE
... Japan's $100 million Hayabusa spacecraft could return to Earth as early as June 2010 if controllers can safely fire the craft's ion engines.

The voyage is currently expected to begin in late March, said Hayabusa project manager Junichiro Kawaguchi.

Tests are underway this month before controllers commit to the return, and officials are expressing caution since the probe has already suffered from several problems in its nearly four-year history...

... Since regaining communications with the spacecraft, controllers have worked to bake off leaked fuel believed to have been deposited on the exterior of the probe. Ground stations also uplinked new attitude control software to help save xenon propellant used by the ion propulsion system.

Ground teams also recently reconditioned Hayabusa's lithium batteries and closed the lid of the return capsule.


Full story:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0702/11hayabusa/

Posted by: konangrit Feb 14 2007, 07:20 AM

QUOTE
...In May 2006, mission managers tested two of the ion engines and found they were working. A third engine may be tested soon but such a test is unlikely – the spacecraft can return on just two engines, says mission manager Jun'ichiro Kawaguchi. "As of today, [there are] no fatal problems to start the ion engines," Kawaguchi told New Scientist.

Mission managers are preparing the spacecraft for its return journey, recently discovering that a star tracker, used for navigation, worked successfully after it had been off for 13 months.

But the trip's success is far from assured. "The spacecraft suffers from many problems and the single [stabilising] reaction wheel left onboard is the only device we can rely on for the ion engine operation," says Kawaguchi. "We are currently updating the onboard software to allow this configuration."...


http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn11181-hayabusa-probe-to-attempt-return-journey.html

Posted by: konangrit Apr 5 2007, 12:55 PM

QUOTE
Hayabusa to start return trip to Earth in mid April

PRESS RELEASE
Date Released: Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Source: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)


The asteroid explorer "Hayabusa" which landed on the asteroid "Itokawa" last November, delivered its probe container for acquired samples to the re-entry capsule, stored it in the capsule, then tightly shut the lid (with latches and seals.)

Since February, JAXA tried a new attitude control method to operate the ion engine, and engine running trials in phases have been underway since late March.

It is scheduled to start fully fledged engine operations in mid April to return to Earth.

The operation of the Hayabusa is still undergoing difficulties, but JAXA will do its utmost to make the explorer return home in June 2010.


http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=22303

Posted by: nop Apr 8 2007, 07:55 AM

PRESS RELEASE:
Status of the Hayabusa
http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/snews/2007/0406.shtml

Posted by: elakdawalla Apr 8 2007, 04:31 PM

Wow -- that's really quite a story of patience in the recovery of a spacecraft...no attitude control fuel left and only one reaction wheel, so they used solar radiation pressure to orient the spacecraft for the return trip!

QUOTE
The spacecraft has been undergoing the new attitude control scheme on orbit since Feb, 2007. The new scheme takes it into account that two of the three reaction wheels are lost and not available and the chemical thrusters propellant is completely lost. The attitude control and spin management maneuver are performed via Xe cold-gas thrusters and the solar radiation pressure was made good use of to make the ion engines thrust vector aligned to the intended acceleration direction.

Posted by: nprev Apr 8 2007, 05:07 PM

Indeed. If the payload does in fact make it all the way home, this will be the greatest story of recovery from near-disaster in the history of UMSF! (Not to downgrade the Hayabusa team's efforts to date at all...they've already been far more than remarkable).

Posted by: djellison Apr 8 2007, 05:15 PM

I wonder if/when the data from Hayabusa will make it to the PDS smile.gif
http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/missions/hayabusa/index.html


Doug

Posted by: Subaru Apr 25 2007, 10:08 PM

Hi there.
Exiciting news on "Shin'ya Matsuura's L/D."
http://smatsu.air-nifty.com/lbyd/2007/04/post_ce17.html

I recommend you to see the page above through a Jp-En translation site
or to see JPACE.
http://jspace.misshie.jp/index.php?LbyD%2F20070424

JAXA/ISAS had a press conference on 24th Apr. 16:30 (Japanese time: GMT +9.)
Jun'ichiroh Kawaguchi, Hitoshi Kuninaka and Makoto Yoshikawa talked:
1) They have another press conference on 25th Apr. 17:00.
And they will say "Hayabusa started returning to Earth" in it.
In fact, her engine(*) already started.
2) Finally, everyone can see all datas of Hayabusa's sensors (AMICA, NIRS, LIDAR, XRS and SPICE) since now. (This topic was shown in this forum, wasn't it?)

[1]
* Her engine. not "engineS."
She will fly with only Thruster D and Z-reaction wheel.
Thruster A: standing by. Not stable.
Thruster B: Running time: 9600 hours. performance deteriorated.
Thruster C: Running time: 6500 hours. Not stable.
Thruster D: Running time: 11100 hours.
Each thruster's design service life: 14000 hours.

Prof. Kuninaka said:
I can say there's a orbit to return Earth with one thruster.
But thruster D should run over 20,000 hours in total, and we didn't test it such a long time.
It may possibly run over 20,000.

Prof. Kawaguchi said:
I cannot say too optimistic comment because I'm the project manager of this mission.
Reaction wheel may possibly go wrong. Remind that 2 of 3 already troubled.
Thruster D must run 8,000 - 10,000 more hours if no other thruster can support it.
My intention of today's conference is to report to you "We have such a hard time."

If other thrusters can work...
Each not-stable thruster may run only 1,000 hours. (Kuninaka)
In other words, though, it may help Thruster D (even 1,000 hours). (Kawaguchi & Kuninaka)

[2]
URL: http://hayabusa.sci.isas.jaxa.jp/
Assistant Prof. Yoshikawa said:
The pages are written in English since they're for academic use.
Current datas are "Level 1" (= nearly "raw datas") and some "Level 2"(= calibrated datas.)
"Level 2" datas will be added in future.
JAXA/ISAS is preparing the documents (each data's "when/where/distance/what".)

Please pationt for a while.

On 25th, HAYABUSA team said:
Since 14:30 25th Apr, we can say "she is on her way home."
* Japanese time (GMT +9)


Anyway, I'll pray for her.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Apr 25 2007, 10:47 PM

Thank you Subaru. That's the kind of information we've all been waiting for. This is an amazing spacecraft, but more importantly it is being operated by an amazing team. Congratulations again go out to the engineers and the entire team.

Posted by: mchan Apr 26 2007, 02:23 AM

Echo EGD's kudos to the Hayabusa team. On an engine and a prayer...

Posted by: djellison Apr 26 2007, 06:56 AM

Maximum kudos for the update - nice to see some great data coming out of JAXA as well!

Doug

Posted by: helvick Apr 26 2007, 10:13 AM

how about a UMSF Hayabusa T-shirt complete with the "It is quick the ぶ" tag.



Yeah I know I get 0/10 for design but I'd wear it, I can't help it I'm a fan.


Posted by: Subaru Apr 26 2007, 01:10 PM

News in English on Spaceflight Now:
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0704/25hayabusa/


And Mr. Matsuura's new post (in Japanese):
http://smatsu.air-nifty.com/lbyd/2007/04/post_ac91.html

Matsuura quotes Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton's word - "MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS." and sais "If they (Hayabusa mission and the members) can't avoid risk now, I hope that the ending is happier than Shackleton team's."

Posted by: djellison Apr 26 2007, 01:16 PM

To his credit - despite never reaching the Pole with his expedition aboard the Endurance - Shackleton got every single crew member home alive smile.gif

Doug

Posted by: Subaru Apr 26 2007, 03:10 PM

QUOTE (djellison @ Apr 26 2007, 10:16 PM) *
To his credit - despite never reaching the Pole with his expedition aboard the Endurance - Shackleton got every single crew member home alive smile.gif

Oh, yes, thanks you.
Matsuura talks about that with his respect, and continues -
QUOTE
But many crew faced misfortune after that. WW1 broke out and they were killed.
(If this "Hayabusa story" is also "againt the risk" story,) I want to see happy ending like "...And all of them became happy."

Posted by: centsworth_II Apr 26 2007, 04:09 PM

The happiest ending (after a safe return) would be for at least
a few grains from Itokowa to be found in the sample container.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Apr 26 2007, 04:59 PM

QUOTE (helvick @ Apr 26 2007, 02:13 AM) *
how about a UMSF Hayabusa T-shirt complete with the "It is quick the ぶ" tag.

Put me down for one. Maybe you could print Subaru's avatar on the back.

Posted by: Thu Apr 28 2007, 12:55 PM

If Hayabusa succeed and bring back a few grams of sample, should it be considered "Apollo 13" of an unmanned spacecraft? rolleyes.gif

Keep it on Hayabusa team, we are with you!

Posted by: djellison Apr 28 2007, 01:24 PM

If it makes it home without any - it'll be Apollo 13.... It would be Apollo 11 if it actually has some samples smile.gif

Posted by: amezz Apr 28 2007, 02:48 PM

It'll be Hayabusa One - Forever! smile.gif

Posted by: Subaru Apr 28 2007, 05:25 PM

Hayabusa, you space falcon... You hear them, baby? Hold together!
(With Harrison-Ford-voice smile.gif )

QUOTE (helvick @ Apr 26 2007, 07:13 PM) *
Yeah I know I get 0/10 for design but I'd wear it, I can't help it I'm a fan.

"It is quick the ぶ" is her honorable nickname - it is the very proof that not only Japanese but non-Japanese people support her.

Posted by: nprev Apr 29 2007, 12:02 AM

"Support" is too weak a word, Subaru...we love her, too, and want her to come home! smile.gif

Posted by: edstrick Apr 29 2007, 08:45 AM

I just hope she doesn't run out of... DUCTAPE!

Posted by: dvandorn Apr 29 2007, 04:05 PM

Otherwise known, in NASA curcles, as "the gray tape." smile.gif

-the other Doug

Posted by: odave May 8 2007, 10:14 PM

Hey guys - I've been out of the loop UMSF-wise for some time due to a crunch at work - but wow, great news for Hayabusa. Best of luck to the plucky little bird. I've been saving the below since December of 2005, and I'm very happy to finally post it

===



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080455/quotes: It's 50 million miles to Earth, we've got one engine, half a case of LIPOVITAN-D, we're in a computer room, and we're wearing sunglasses.

Jake: Hit it.


...And just like the Bluesmobile, I hope to see Hayabusa fall apart just after completing its return to Earth smile.gif

Posted by: ElkGroveDan May 9 2007, 01:25 AM

QUOTE (odave @ May 8 2007, 02:14 PM) *
It's 50 million miles to Earth, we've got one engine, half a case of LIPOVITAN-D, we're in a computer room, and we're wearing sunglasses.


Yer killin me! laugh.gif laugh.gif laugh.gif laugh.gif

Posted by: CosmicRocker May 9 2007, 03:52 AM

odave: ROTFL! laugh.gif

That's purely genius.

They'll make it home, though. "They're on a mission from God." wink.gif

Posted by: spdf Aug 22 2007, 04:35 PM

http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/snews/2007/0820.shtml

Ion engine C is back working!

Posted by: tfisher Aug 22 2007, 11:58 PM

Wow, they might make it after all. Their chances of a successful return sounded really dubious, but its great news to see a piece of hardware start working again instead of just more hardware stopping to work... :^)

Posted by: maycm Aug 24 2007, 05:45 PM

....and a little more from New Scientist

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn12536-ignition-of-third-ion-engine-boosts-asteroid-probe.html

Posted by: Subaru Sep 8 2007, 01:11 PM

- http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/snews/2007/0822.shtml
- Hayabusa's distance from Earth (on Aug. 16): 46,930,700 km

-----------------

On July 21, ISAS showed a new movie "[http://www.live-net.co.jp/live/gallery/ex10/01.htm" in the public open day.
Hayabusa's action in the movie is based upon the real telemetry data!
(I saw it and found a big news - Hayabusa was called 'a boy'!)
They said you can see it on the web some months after.
So I made a teaser poster of it (inspired by http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=870&view=findpost&p=28250). tongue.gif
- http://tatooin.hp.infoseek.co.jp/hayabusa/rof_768.jpg
- http://tatooin.hp.infoseek.co.jp/hayabusa/rof_l.jpg
- Original: http://tatooin.hp.infoseek.co.jp/hayabusa/roj.jpg

Posted by: nprev Sep 8 2007, 02:00 PM

Hey, Subaru; that's an extremely cool poster! smile.gif

Posted by: ugordan Sep 8 2007, 02:12 PM

Hehe, yes, that's way cool! laugh.gif

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Sep 8 2007, 03:07 PM

Anyone know when Doug's birthday is? I bet that would look good in "The Shed" assuming there's any wall space left.

Posted by: elakdawalla Sep 8 2007, 03:43 PM

Dec 23 wink.gif
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=3664

Love the poster, Subaru; especially the name of the server it's hosted on!

--Emily

Posted by: djellison Sep 8 2007, 04:20 PM

A lovely thought guys - but I'm the only person I know of who actually walked out of a Star Wars movie I disliked it so much. ohmy.gif I consider them less like films, more a simple outing for the ego of Lucas. A cool poster, but given my hatred for the inspiring film, not something I could appreciate smile.gif

Doug

Posted by: Subaru Sep 9 2007, 01:04 PM

I'm sorry that I reminded you of a unwelcome memory, Doug.
Don't dislike Hayabusa because of it, please? sad.gif

Posted by: djellison Sep 9 2007, 06:27 PM

Like I said - a very cool poster - and Hayabusa is frankly a miracle of the current generation of unmanned exploration - I just hate the movie used as an inspiration for the poster. No offense meant.

Doug

Posted by: Subaru Oct 29 2007, 01:04 PM

Hitoshi Kuninaka has reported about Hayabusa's coasting.
Below is quick - and poor - translation of http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/j/topics/topics/2007/1029.shtml.

Hayabusa had been flying with an ion engine since this April - and she succeeded first orbit transfer as the schedule.
We stopped her engine on 18th Oct, and stopped the reaction wheel on 24th.
Current status:
Engine run time: 31,000 hour in total
Delta v: 1,700 m/s in total
Propulsive performances and properant : enough
Spin stabilized, using Solar radiation pressure.
The Ion engine(s) and the reaction wheel is restarted after the coasting for Feb.2009.
Required Delta v to return to Earth is only 400 m/s.

Posted by: Subaru Nov 22 2007, 01:01 PM

Hi, JAXA/ISAS has released "INORI (PRAY): Return of the Falcon" today.

http://spaceinfo.jaxa.jp/inori/en/index.html
You can watch it and download a Windows Media file on the page above.

Posted by: nprev Nov 22 2007, 02:34 PM

Thanks for the link, Subaru! smile.gif Looks pretty slick, but it's a long download (63 Mb), so I'll grab it later today.

Posted by: nop Nov 22 2007, 04:03 PM

QUOTE (Subaru @ Nov 22 2007, 10:01 PM) *
Hi, JAXA/ISAS has released "INORI (PRAY): Return of the Falcon" today.


Thanks for quick promotion, Subaru tongue.gif

All motions and orbits of Hayabusa in this movie are based on actual telemetry data!
Here is a gallery by the CG production company.
http://www.live-net.co.jp/live/gallery/ex10/01.htm

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Nov 22 2007, 04:21 PM

Thanks Subaru. I enjoyed that.

Posted by: djellison Nov 22 2007, 04:23 PM

That's really rather cool. The bounce of the first landing is real scarey!

Doug

Posted by: nprev Nov 22 2007, 05:04 PM

That was great!!! Can't believe how emotional it was in some spots, and the music was just perfect. "Wake up..."; gotta tell ya, that almost got me all watery-eyed; she was down, but definitely not out!

Doug, I'm with you on the first touchdown scary factor...kept waiting for one of the arrays to catch an outcrop or the surface itself...argh, it was agonizing, can only imagine how the team felt afterwards.

Superb, period, and IMHO possibly the best depiction of the drama that really is UMSF. GO HAYABUSA!!!!

Posted by: dilo Nov 22 2007, 09:01 PM

Fully agree with last 3 comments, a MUST-SEE (and HEAR) video!
About touchdowns, I ignored (forgot?) that Hayabusa landed and remained 30min on the asteroid surface... huh.gif
Let's hope about perfect capsule re-entry 3 years from now... rolleyes.gif

Posted by: climber Nov 22 2007, 09:15 PM

That's science & poetry at once !
I agree with all comments.
I also saw that on the computer graphic side, some people's first name is Masaro.
I knew Dan Maas has to be somewhere in the design wink.gif

Posted by: belleraphon1 Nov 28 2007, 01:21 PM

Thanks indeed Subaru

Sheer poetry in motion!!!! Add more points to JAXA (after those wonderful KAGUYA HDTV lunar videos)

JAXA understands science, poetry, and public relations.

Tears again....

Craig

Posted by: Paolo Jul 20 2008, 02:34 PM

No one seems to have noticed that JAXA has released some updates on Hayabusa in the latest months
http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/topics/2008/0602.shtml
http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/topics/2008/0306.shtml
but the http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/j/enterp/missions/hayabusa/today.shtml seems to have some additional details

Posted by: nprev Jul 20 2008, 02:53 PM

Thanks, Paolo; sure wish I could read the Japanese page, does appear to be the most current... sad.gif

Sounds like she's still doing alright based on the 2 Jun update, though.

EDIT: Okay, it's a "he", not a "she"; I stand corrected. Also had to watch the video again, and here I am all teary-eyed again, dammit! (What a terrific piece of work that is!)

Posted by: jamescanvin Jul 20 2008, 04:09 PM

Here is what Google Translate makes of the Japanese:


QUOTE
July 17, 2008 Update

Seen from Earth, Hayabusa direction and I are very close to the sun's direction. Synthetic. Hayabusa waves to communicate with you and the sun to pass very close to the noise. This is, of course, but as expected the case to備えるべく, operators among the serious discussion.

July 10, 2008 Update

Hayabusa you and the relationship between the earth and the position has been so good the communication is getting better. You can get 128 bps. Almost five minutes, Hayabusa check your physical condition. Hayabusa pit you download the data to be gradually started.

July 4, 2008 Update

You're a Falcon, spin-stabilized, around Kuru, ballistic flight to continue. Although hibernation mode, five days a week long operation in the ORIMASHI, Hayabusa, or check your physical condition, or by measuring the distance.


http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.isas.jaxa.jp%2Fj%2Fenterp%2Fmissions%2Fhayabusa%2Ftoday.shtml&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ja&tl=en

Posted by: nprev Jul 20 2008, 04:18 PM

Thanks to you, James. My spin is to be taken seriously as my Sun-angle changes throughout the day. But the noise will increase; this is permanent.

(I guess in about 10 years or so we'll have translation software capable of handling idioms...till then, we can all laugh!!! tongue.gif I'm sure that direct English to Japanese translations look kind of goofy as well.)

Posted by: Subaru Feb 4 2009, 09:25 AM

Good morning Hayabusa!
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2009/02/20090204_hayabusa_j.html

On 4th Feb. 2009 11:35 a.m. (JST), Hayabusa's ion engine restarted.
"His" wink.gif RW +Z also restarted before the engine.
The engine and the RW must keep working by March 2010.

English page will be released soon, I think.


[Edit]
English page! : http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/topics/2009/0204.shtml

QUOTE
JAXA reignited the ion engine of the Asteroid Explore "HAYABUSA" for a powered flight at 11:35 a.m. on February 4, 2009 (JST.) The HAYABUSA arrived at the asteroid "ITOKAWA" in 2005 and is now scheduled to return to the Earth in June 2010.We will continue to gradually accelerate the HAYABUSA by the ion engine until around March 2010 to carry out the second phase orbit maneuvering for returning it to the Earth.


Posted by: nprev Feb 4 2009, 09:53 AM

Thanks for the good news, Subaru! smile.gif Looking forward to the further adventures of the Falcon, and a successful journey home.

Posted by: ilbasso Feb 7 2009, 10:14 PM

If and when Hyabusa makes it home again, it will join the MERs as contenders for 'Most Improbable Survivor of the Century'. It's amazing to me that JAXA is bringing this little bird home after all the damage and malfunctions it sustained in deep space.

Posted by: tedstryk Feb 7 2009, 10:49 PM

It will also be a nervous moment, given the uncertainty of the pellet firings...is there anything in the capsule or not? Based on what I have read I would lean toward "not," but I would love to be wrong!

Posted by: jamescanvin Feb 8 2009, 12:23 PM

Emily has a great article about the difficulties getting Hayabusa back under control.

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001834/

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Feb 8 2009, 04:08 PM

Attitude control using photon pressure! Those guys need to win some kind of award for that kind of thinking. That is just amazing.

I really doubt there's anything in the capsule, but when it returns nonetheless that engineering team needs a ticker-tape parade through Tokyo.

Posted by: helvick Feb 8 2009, 04:37 PM

I'm delighted to see that "It is quick, the ぶ" continues to slowly make her way home. I'll second EGD's suggestion - these guys deserve some sort of award for such a creative solution to a near fatal challenge. I'm sure they would settle for just getting their little bird home though and with that sort of determination I am very hopeful that they will succeed.
As far as the whole mission is concerned, even if the sample return process fails to yield any asteroid particles the overall mission can only be considered a huge success, and a fantastic learning\development process for JAXA.


Posted by: Phil Stooke Apr 20 2009, 05:11 PM

Slightly off topic but at least it's a Hayabusa thread...

I have just completed a map of Itokawa. The latest Icarus has a paper about craters on Itokawa. It includes images I've been looking for for a long time, the Itokawa shape model with latitude-longitude grids superimposed. (They were shown at LPSC a few years ago but not available until now). They give the positional control needed to make a map. My map is created using a set of Itokawa shape model renderings which can be seen here:

http://hayabusa.sci.isas.jaxa.jp/shape.pl

A later version (much later...) will be created out of actual images of the asteroid, at higher resolution than this one. But this map provides the intermediate geometric control needed for that later map. There are some distortions around 0 long, -30 lat where the surface grazes the radii in the shape model, causing a cartographic black hole like an overhanging cliff on a terrestrial map. The map is fudged a bit in that area. (can you say 'fudged' on the internet? - oops, I did it again).

Phil


Posted by: tedstryk Apr 20 2009, 11:55 PM

Wow, that is incredible!

Posted by: chuckclark Aug 4 2009, 12:22 PM

I was wondering how Phil was progressing with the Itokawa map. Glad to see you've got it finished.
JAXA just sent me a plastic model of Itokawa (I'll post a pic as soon as I corral a digital photographer) that I'll use to make a constant-scale natural boundary map of the asteroid.
If anyone is interested, I'll also post pics of the map-making process -- YO, FORUM ADMINISTRATOR! Any chance of getting these last three posts snipped out of this thread and placed in a new topic, with title of, say, "Mapping Itokawa"?

Can't wait for the photomosaic map. Any predictions, Phil, on availability?

Posted by: Phil Stooke Aug 4 2009, 02:28 PM

Hi Chuck - I'm not working on it at the moment, I'm too tied up with other things. And if Phobos-Grunt is launched this year I will do a new Phobos mosaic first. So it will be a while.

Phil

Posted by: chuckclark Aug 4 2009, 02:47 PM

Well, this map will work just fine for the first effort.
And i suppose there is always the chance that some one at JAXA will put one together.

Posted by: Tayfun Öner Aug 4 2009, 06:14 PM

Hi Chuck, I am happy and relieved that you've got an Itokawa model.

Posted by: chuckclark Aug 4 2009, 08:17 PM

Tayfun,
Please keep me in your fabrication schedule though. The JAXA model is impressive in size -- the equal of one of your models, but it does not have latitude and longitude scorings on it. It will serve, because I can mark them by eye (using the Icarus paper's images), but a higher level of inaccuracy is inevitable. So whenever Phil gets around to the photomosaic, let's revisit a fabrication by you.
Stay tuned.

Posted by: Paolo Aug 27 2009, 05:54 PM

Some updates (in Japanese only alas) http://www.isas.ac.jp/j/enterp/missions/hayabusa/today.shtml
Hayabusa has apparently entered safe mode on 13 august, but the Earth return should not be affected

Posted by: Subaru Oct 8 2009, 04:08 PM

QUOTE (Paolo @ Aug 28 2009, 02:54 AM) *
Some updates (in Japanese only alas) http://www.isas.ac.jp/j/enterp/missions/hayabusa/today.shtml
Hayabusa has apparently entered safe mode on 13 august, but the Earth return should not be affected


His engine(s?) restarted in early morning on 26th Sep.
http://www.isas.ac.jp/j/enterp/missions/hayabusa/today.shtml

And I should report a news.
Associate Professor Yoshikawa, the science manager of Hayabusa mission, had a public lecture on 13rd Sep.
He talked on outreachs (and supports from Hayabusa's fans) with some fanarts - including http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=870&st=810&p=28250&#entry28250
Congratulations, odave! biggrin.gif

Posted by: Ishigame Nov 9 2009, 01:09 PM

The main ion engine D has been inactive because of aging degradation since 4th NOV. The team has been trying to restart it but not succeeded yet.
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2009/11/20091109_hayabusa_j.html (Japanese)

Other three main engines' status are as below:
Engine A: Inactive because of electronic instability since MAY 2003, shortly after the launch
Engine B: Disabled because of aging degradation since APR 2007
Engine C: Operable but inactive because of aging degradation

A newspaper says that Engines A/B have also been unable to be restarted. If it's true, the aged Engine C is the only operable thruster.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/space/news/20091109-OYT1T00774.htm (Japanese)

Pray for his safe return, please.

Posted by: MahFL Nov 9 2009, 02:28 PM

If no engines work, can it get home ?

Posted by: Hungry4info Nov 9 2009, 02:43 PM

QUOTE (MahFL @ Nov 9 2009, 08:28 AM) *
If no engines work, can it get home ?


If I understand the mission properly, No.

The spacecraft needs to get close enough to Earth to deploy the sample return capsule. If you're not close enough to Earth, the sample return capsule won't reach the planet when it is deployed.

Posted by: imipak Nov 9 2009, 07:30 PM

So it all hangs on Engine C. *crosses fingers* To lose the sample return at this stage would be a cruel fate.

Posted by: Ishigame Nov 9 2009, 08:52 PM

Hayabusa had to make 200m/s acceleration at August 2009. He has plenty fuel to do it but the problem is the main engines: All but Engine A have already been running over their rated life by far. The Engines C/D have weakened from 8.5mN of rated power to 5mN.

In addition, even if Engine C manages to continue to work until June, the probe will run into another major problem; orbit maneuver. The team planned to accelerate him with Engines C/D until March and then to make some orbit maneuvers for atmosphere entry during inertial flight. With only one engine, however, Hayabusa will have to continue to accelerate until the very last minute. It means he will have to do a big maneuver in a short period of time. As you know he has already lost a major part of abilities to do it. It's going to be a very tough operation.

Posted by: Ishigame Nov 10 2009, 09:35 AM

English articles have been uploaded:

http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/11/engine_trouble_for_already_tar.html
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0911/09hayabusa/

Posted by: dmuller Nov 10 2009, 10:21 AM

Does anybody by any chance have the current orbital details, kernels or similar for Hayabusa?

Posted by: Ishigame Nov 19 2009, 06:55 AM

Jaxa is holding a press conference about Hayabusa at 1800-1900 JST (+9:00) this evening. I'll follow it as soon as possible.

Posted by: Subaru Nov 19 2009, 09:15 AM

HAYABUSA keeps coming back!
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2009/11/20091119_hayabusa_j.html (JP)
# Sorry, I cannot tell you details because I have no Jp-En dictionally now.

Posted by: Ishigame Nov 19 2009, 09:19 AM

@Subaru

According to the press release, the team has managed to combine the neutralizer of Engine A and the ion source of Engine B; they can provide as much power as one engine (6.5 mN). With Engine C, the team can secure equivalent power to two engines now.
Hayabusa will be able to return in Jun 2010 as the team has planed.

[EDIT]
- Engines A/B/D can no longer stand alone.
- They won't use Engines A/B and C simultaneously. Engine C will be regarded as a back-up as long as possible.
- Combining two engines has never been tested on the ground but it has been working for one week (180 hours). It has been managed thanks to an emergency circuit.
- Combining two engines requires twice as much power/fuel as standards but Hayabusa has plenty resource. 5kg of fuel will be required to gain 200m/s (2000 hours) acceleration while Hayabusa still has 20kg of fuel.
- The acceleration will continue until mid Mar 2010.
- The situation doesn't allow premature conclusions. If more troubles happen, e.g. Engines A/B stop before the end of the year, the team will have to consider another plan about 2013-returning.

[EDIT 2]
Prof. Jun'ichiro Kawaguchi, the project manager said, "If we fail to bring back the probe, it will be the same no matter when it become clear, early or late. Whether we can do it or not is the matter."

Posted by: MahFL Nov 19 2009, 11:22 AM

Sounds like good news. The 2013 option not so good though.

Posted by: Ishigame Nov 19 2009, 03:21 PM

An English article has been uploaded:
http://spacespin.org/article.php/91143-restoration-hayabusa-return-cruise

@MahFL
Prof. Kawaguchi said that the 2013 option would go far beyond the rated life of Hayabusa, so he would like to avoid it as much as possible, a few years ago.

[EDIT]
Other English articles:
http://planetary.org/blog/article/00002221/
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0911/19hayabusa/

Posted by: centsworth_II Nov 19 2009, 04:55 PM

Brilliant! The saga continues!

If the collection capsule is returned, even if it contains no sample, it will be one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of unmanned spaceflight. Unmanned spaceflight's Apollo 13!

Posted by: chuckclark Dec 8 2009, 11:09 PM

QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Apr 20 2009, 12:11 PM) *
I have just completed a map of Itokawa.

Phil, can you add any shading and shadows onto this map? It's a bit washed out to make much sense when I paste it into the constant scale-natural boundary map.

What with those rocks and that narrow neck, it is proving to be a complex little map.
Here are some images of the model I'm working with, as I've got it marked up with graticules, ridges & valleys, followed by a pic of the nearly-empty drawing board with the beginnings of the map.


 

Posted by: Phil Stooke Dec 9 2009, 03:54 AM

Hi Chuck, It'll be a while before I can do what you want. I would like to make a photomosaic map of Itokawa, but I want to do a lot of things... so it might be a year before I can get to it. A new map of Phobos has to come first.

Phil

Posted by: chuckclark Dec 9 2009, 04:22 AM

Quote removed - Mod

Yeah, I was grasping at straws, hoping it'd be just a few mouse clicks (like we architects now do with our CAD programs) to at least pop a few shadows on to bring out the form. Sounds like that's a stretch. Oh well. At least with constant-scale natural boundary maps the shape itself has content, and we'll all have to be content with that for a while . . .

Posted by: Phil Stooke Dec 10 2009, 03:55 AM

Maybe just making a high contrast version of it would suit your purposes?

Phil

Posted by: chuckclark Dec 10 2009, 10:03 AM

Absolutely by all means yes please most grateful.

Posted by: Paolo Dec 26 2009, 07:36 PM

The instrument itself may be pretty dead by now, but here is an interesting paper from arXiv
http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.4797

Posted by: chuckclark Jan 14 2010, 02:00 AM

So Phil, I've got the first layout nearly complete.
how is that high contrast adjustment coming along?
Chuck

Posted by: mchan Jan 14 2010, 07:23 AM

Recent Spaceflightnow article

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1001/11hayabusa/

Go Hayabusa!

Posted by: brellis Jan 14 2010, 08:18 AM

if the capsule lands successfully, with or without grains, this mission combines the successes of the Galileo probe and the Stardust mission. Awesome!

Posted by: helvick Jan 14 2010, 06:53 PM

This is great news - the JAXA team deserve a little bit of luck now - they've solved a seemingly endless series of problems and still managed to bring this wonderful little bird almost all the way home, " It is quick the ぶ" is definitely my favourite little spacecraft that could.

We should think about sending the team some crates of these:



Posted by: tedstryk Jan 14 2010, 07:04 PM

QUOTE (brellis @ Jan 14 2010, 09:18 AM) *
if the capsule lands successfully, with or without grains, this mission combines the successes of the Galileo probe and the Stardust mission. Awesome!


Why the Galileo probe?

Posted by: Phil Stooke Jan 14 2010, 07:13 PM

Chuck mentioned the high contrast version of my previous map, and I'll put it here in case anyone else is interested in it as well.



Phil

Posted by: hendric Jan 14 2010, 10:19 PM

I think the Galileo comparison is in terms of the amount of trials and tribulations the team has gone through to succeed.

Posted by: brellis Jan 15 2010, 02:15 AM

The solution to combine parts of two broken ion engines to make one working engine seems comparable to the antenna solution and related software upgrade for Galileo.

Posted by: tedstryk Jan 15 2010, 02:46 AM

Oh, you mean the whole mission. When you said probe, I was thinking of the atmospheric probe, which is where I got confused.

Posted by: chuckclark Jan 17 2010, 04:04 AM

Philip,
One problem with the new, high-contrast map -- could you remake it and include 10 degree graticles, like your low-contrast map? Otherwise I have to rough them in with Photoshop, which is nowhere near as accurate as you can do.
Here's how the constant-scale natural boundary map looks at the moment. (The one pasted square is off the low-contrast map.)


 

Posted by: Phil Stooke Jan 17 2010, 04:19 AM

Sorry. I thought you'd prefer it without a grid. You realize you could just take the original post and crank up the contrast in Photoshop, right? But I can send the other version to you tomorrow.

Phil

Posted by: chuckclark Jan 17 2010, 04:38 AM

No, I didn't realize that was just a Photoshop tweak. I thought you were fiddling with the 3-D file; you know, adding shades and shadows or something along those lines. I'll give it a whirl, but in case I don't get the hang of contrast adjustment, please go ahead and post the gridded, high-contrast version.
EDIT: Okay, I figured out what to do. For all you Photoshop novices out there, Phil, I think, actually did a "levels" adjustment. When I tried just a "brightness/contrast" adjustment, I lost the lost and bottom ends (the brightest whites and the darkest darks) of the pixel spread. This is easy to keep in a levels adjustment. (I've got the adjusted image on an off-line machine so can't easily post my results here, but give a me a day or so (to cut and paste) and I'll post the full constant-scale natural boundary map.
Phil, thanks for the hand-holding session.

Posted by: chuckclark Jan 20 2010, 01:50 AM

Murphy's Law.
When I tried to crank up the contrast on the gridded map, it affected the grid lines themselves, casting ghost-lines into the imagery proper. So I used Phil's ungridded, high-contrast map and added the graticles as a separate layer. Results are much cleaner. By the way, Phil, thanks for using a divisible-by-360 pixel size, so easy to add the lines onto it.
Here's how things look so far.

 

Posted by: dmuller Feb 1 2010, 06:30 AM

Hayabusa would miss Earth by just 1 million km if the ion drives completely fail at this stage:
http://www.jspec.jaxa.jp/e/activity/hayabusa.html

Posted by: konangrit Feb 9 2010, 03:39 AM

New update at the above link, Hayabusa's trajectory on February 3rd would see it come within 750,000 km of Earth.


Posted by: brellis Feb 9 2010, 07:05 AM

Is Hayabusa flying by earth against earth's orbit around the sun?

Edit: It will pass inside the earth/moon system after earth has passed spring equinox. The angle on the third graph looked scarier at first glance.

Posted by: Hungry4info Feb 9 2010, 11:29 AM

QUOTE (brellis @ Feb 9 2010, 01:05 AM) *
Is Hayabusa flying by earth against earth's orbit around the sun?

No. It has had no opportunity to get into a retrograde solar orbit.

Posted by: maycm Feb 9 2010, 04:35 PM

So, if I read the charts correctly, does this mean that the potential capsule recovery is June 2010?

Posted by: nprev Feb 9 2010, 11:43 PM

That was my impression. JAXA is apparently being extremely careful not to commit to a specific re-entry date, which may be prudent for expectation management. IIRC, there are also long-standing security/safety issues of some sort which I don't understand very well; perhaps they're concerned about spectators entering the recovery area & either being hurt or interfering with the recovery effort?

Posted by: dmuller Feb 10 2010, 12:53 AM

AFAIK Hayabusa is slated to land in the desert in Australia, much of which is a restricted zone (thanks to nuke testing some decades ago) anyway. Plus it's huge, and many parts are not easily accessible, so i dont think that's a major problem.

Posted by: ugordan Feb 10 2010, 10:14 AM

QUOTE (nprev @ Feb 10 2010, 12:43 AM) *
JAXA is apparently being extremely careful not to commit to a specific re-entry date, which may be prudent for expectation management.

Somehow I get the feeling their reentry window doesn't have that much wiggle room. To hit the specified landing ellipse with certain entry conditions would narrow down the window to a short period of time each day. I wonder if they can even reschedule the landing to +/- 24 hours at this point in time. The landing date could already be set.

Posted by: nprev Feb 10 2010, 02:13 PM

I've been wondering about that as well, albeit at sort of the other extreme. They probably do indeed have a tight landing window, but until (& unless) the thrusters get them to where they need to be to release the capsule they sure don't specify it.

Hayabusa's drive seems to offer so much flexibility in some ways, though; I don't really know what to expect.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Feb 10 2010, 02:48 PM

QUOTE (dmuller @ Feb 9 2010, 04:53 PM) *
AFAIK Hayabusa is slated to land in the desert in Australia, much of which is a restricted zone


With all they've been through I'll be doubly amazed if they are able to hit the keyhole necessary for this feat. I'd be just as impressed if it came down in the middle of Disneyland.

Posted by: nprev Feb 10 2010, 11:22 PM

You know, that actually might be the rub in all this. It's probably much easier to set up a survivable reentry trajectory than to define a landing area with great precision at this point considering, as you said, Dan, the many challenges Hayabusa continues to face. They may not yet know where they can land it with any degree of certainty.

Posted by: Hungry4info Feb 10 2010, 11:29 PM

A survivable re-entry trajectory might include getting to a specific angle. The whole "too steep you burn up, too shallow you bounce off" analogy that gets thrown around every time an unbound spacecraft comes flying toward Earth. If indeed a specific angle is needed (give or take an acceptable margin), then it narrows the permissible landing sites quite a bit to a circle concentric with Earth's disk in Hayabusa's sky.

Posted by: nprev Feb 10 2010, 11:34 PM

Yeah, not saying that this won't be resolved quite quickly once she gets within range. The biggest variable now seems to be actual arrival date & time at the ejection point, which of course will affect the part of the world that the capsule can reach.

Anybody know if it floats?

Posted by: ugordan Feb 11 2010, 09:05 AM

With it being designed to land in a desert, I'd have to go with no.

Posted by: dmuller Feb 11 2010, 11:27 AM

I think the arrival time can be "adjusted", within limits. 100 days out from Earth, my sim tells me the delta-v required to delay your arrival by 24 hours and maintaining the same entry angle is around 50 - 60 m/s. Hayabusa should be able to make such an adjustment (or less thereof, to make sure Australia is there as well at that time), either as an independent maneuver or built into the current thrusting (through spacecraft attitude). I would think the latter is built into the mission planning anyway. Unfortunately I have no access to any software to properly simulate / calculate this.

Question regarding landing in water: has any UNMANNED mission (other than unmanned Apollos etc) ever intentionally set down in water? How would you find the craft even with a beacon ... it ain't that big anymore :-)

Posted by: Paolo Feb 11 2010, 03:02 PM

QUOTE (dmuller @ Feb 11 2010, 12:27 PM) *
Question regarding landing in water: has any UNMANNED mission (other than unmanned Apollos etc) ever intentionally set down in water?


Zond 8 intentionally splashed down in the Indian Ocean (unlike Zond 5, which did so unitentionally).
I am sure there were also a few (unintentional) water recoveries of Corona film buckets that missed their mid-air recovery.

Posted by: tasp Feb 11 2010, 03:03 PM

IIRC, there have been aerial snags of film canisters dropped from early earth 'observation' satellites. Some may have been over water, and it would seem likely there may have been a miss or two. Due to the sensitive nature of the observations, it would be likely the authorities would mount considerable effort to retrieve anything that went astray.

Seems like I have seen a film of a successful aerial snag somewhere . . . .

Posted by: tasp Feb 11 2010, 03:05 PM

LOL, Paolo, thanks for recalling the name of the project for me. Most likely there would be no confirmation of any 'splashdowns' in that project.


Posted by: nprev Feb 11 2010, 03:18 PM

QUOTE (dmuller @ Feb 11 2010, 03:27 AM) *
I think the arrival time can be "adjusted", within limits. 100 days out from Earth, my sim tells me the delta-v required to delay your arrival by 24 hours and maintaining the same entry angle is around 50 - 60 m/s.


Re your sim(s): Wow. smile.gif

That's a fairly hefty amount of delta-V, esp. for a very low ISP thrust system. This may be more of a constraint than an opportunity.

Posted by: Paolo Feb 11 2010, 03:37 PM

QUOTE (tasp @ Feb 11 2010, 04:05 PM) *
Most likely there would be no confirmation of any 'splashdowns' in that project.


I don't have my references at hand now but IIRC the first recovery of the series (Discoverer 13, I think) was made in water. The bucket contained only a US flag that was shown to the press by president Eisenhower.
Otherwise (IIRC, again) Corona film buckets were not designed to float for long periods of time. It was considered preferable to have the film sunk than to have it recovered by the "bogeys"...

Posted by: dmuller Feb 11 2010, 03:59 PM

The 50m/s is indeed a lot, not sure how accurate that number is. So I dont think that they dont know yet when entry will occur; it be pretty much targeted for already ever since the thrusting resumed. The question is of course whether they make it, or whether something else starts to act up on the craft.

Did some "research" on Wikipedia. Entry timeline is as follows:

CODE
# X−90 days: Finish the ion-engine operation and measure the precise trajectory.
# X−42 days: Trajectory Control Maneuver 1 (TCM-1) to the Earth-rim trajectory.
# X−21 days: TCM-2 precision trajectory control to the Earth rim.
# X−9 days: TCM-3 to change the trajectory from the Earth rim to Woomera, South Australia.
# X−4 days: TCM-4 precision maneuver to Woomera.
# X−1 day: Capsule temperature heating control.
# X−8 hours: Release the capsule.
# X−0 hours: Reentry of the capsule, expected to land in the Woomera Prohibited Area


Interesting article also at http://m.nationalgeographic.com/news/37737/;jsessionid=55592B9528DE163A79DBC92F3C395656.wap1 ... the whole spacecraft will enter Earth's atmosphere, not only the return capsule. They say it's to simulate the behaviour of an asteroid near the Earth, though my take is that they dont have enough engine power to get the craft out of Earth's way after capsule release ...

Posted by: BrianJ Feb 11 2010, 04:45 PM

Some interesting info from the Hayabusa re-entry observation campaign:
http://airborne.seti.org/hayabusa/mission.html

Posted by: konangrit Feb 15 2010, 01:29 PM

QUOTE
Feb.15,2010

Hayabusa has kept the approach path right on the course targeted to the Earth.

The closest approach to the Earth is 600 thousand kilometers as of today. And in a few weeks, Hayabusa will be on the trajectory passing through within the Moon's distance. The ion engines aboard have worked normally last week. The distance between the spacecraft and the Sun is gradually decreasing to 1AU that is the revolution radius of the Earth. The temperature measured at various points on the spacecraft increases gradually, and the project team has started to tackle with the heater control to prevent over-heating. The radio communication time is now only two minutes each way with enhanced bit rate.



Posted by: brellis Feb 15 2010, 03:42 PM

dang, now we gotta worry about overheating? unsure.gif

Posted by: Explorer1 Feb 15 2010, 07:48 PM

QUOTE (brellis @ Feb 15 2010, 07:42 AM) *
dang, now we gotta worry about overheating? unsure.gif


I'm sure it's not a big deal, we're talking about Earth's distance from the Sun. It was already here once before during a previous Earth fly-by.

Posted by: ugordan Feb 15 2010, 07:52 PM

QUOTE (Explorer1 @ Feb 15 2010, 08:48 PM) *
It was already here once before during a previous Earth fly-by.

But not necessarily in the current geometry. Who knows what kind of an orientation they're keeping to make the "rigged" ion engine thrust the way it does, with little to no attitude control and how it affects the spacecraft thermally.

Posted by: elakdawalla Feb 15 2010, 10:18 PM

With JAXA releases it's always hard to know what precisely is meant; a lot is lost in translation. (This is not to criticize JAXA; I'm grateful that they put out stuff in English at all.) When I read the sentence about heating, my first reaction was "uh-oh," but then I considered for a bit and decided it was more likely they're just talking about the fact that they haven't had to expend effort dealing with heating in the past, when Hayabusa was farther from the Sun, and that the issue is just coming to the forefront now; that it's not an unexpected problem. But it's really impossible to know which is the truth without actually asking someone in JAXA. I can try to explore the issue a bit and see if there's anything more revealing in the Japanese version of the update.

Posted by: Paolo Feb 20 2010, 06:13 PM

Hayabusa's trajectory now almost skimming the Moon's orbit
http://www.hayabusa.isas.jaxa.jp/e/index.html

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