My apologies. I seem to be apologising all the time... I must have been drunk. My calculation was entirely wrong, partly because of the conversion (an excuse!). I am now glad that you gave me the metric number. I did my calculation again and again and I now find the statistically probable number of particles to be found in one of the chambers is down to 3.45.

The sample cannister is a cylinder, 5 cm in diameter and 6 cm in height as I remember it and it has two chambers.

All this makes me think because they are now saying that there are more than 1,000 grains found in the chamber.

I still have a burning question, though. Only a few days ago they were struggling with two particles in there. How can they possibly find more than 1,000 grains all of a sudden? Photographs and image processing?

I have now decided to translate the press conference held on 5 July. It seems an integral part of this Hayabusa saga. I think I will do this in 10 or dozen bits so that admin do not get upset about its single volume.

I think almost 100% of information so far uploaded originated from that press conference. One advantage to me is that other people can interpret what they said there so that might solve a few of my questions that I still have...

Pandaneko

I am very glad to have this information. I have no detailed knowledge of the sample cannister. The second chamber could have been clean down to about 3 or 4 grains? I now just wonder which of the two chambers they are looking into. Thanks, anyway!!!

Pandaneko

Pan, if this is really concerning you - and it's good of you to be so considerate, by the way! - you might like to consider starting up a blog, to enable you to write longer posts and then direct us to them? There are lots of great, free blog sites (I use and swear by Wordpress) and I find my blog absolutely invaluable for writing quite (stop laughing, everyone!) long posts about Mars-related subjects, often illustrated with very big images, which I can then just point people here towards rather than post huge entries on the forum. Just a thought.

Here is the first bit of translation of the 5 July press briefing.

Kawaguchi project manager says, here below

Container opening started on 24 June

After that,

Container opening, catcher lifting, inspection of chamber A by opening its lid, inspection of the inside of the container

Chamber A was transported (to the super clean room they had constructed, I think) and serious investigation started.

I told you that opening would take about one week and that we will talk to you upon extracting the samples. Today, that one week has passed for this briefing. At that time, we explained that there must be some materials that went to Itokawa and came back.

Also, anything else found in there cannot be explained immediately. That is the absolute basis of our investigation.

Right now, we have only opened chamber A. There is no information about chamber B.

So far, we have found grains within the container surface and the catcher A (I think this refers to the chamber A) and some of them are visible to naked eyes and others are microscope sized.

Pandaneko

I will continue to translate.

Not really, I am fraid. I have other blogs already running about my personal hobbies. Besides, once these grains' identity were discovered further information will be forthcoming anyway from other sources, I think and I hope. I will stay with UMSF, though.

Pandaneko

No prob Pan, really. Your posts are just fine.

Reading back a little I realise that the chamber being looked into now is the cleaner chamber which was opened after arriving at Itokawa. That makes sense...

Pandaneko

Here is a second bit of translation. It was given by Mr Mukai of JAXA and we already know most of what he said. So, just the jist of it.


Mr Mukai of JAXA says:

Photo above is the needle and the grain. Maginification is 100.

Photo below is the inside surface of the sample cannister. This is just an ordinary photo. As you can see there are grains visible to nake eyes. We do not know what they are, but we think they are of terretrial origin.

We do not wish to say anything definite yet as we do not know. Dust particles inside the clean room and at the launch site have been collected. Mere comparison will tell us what they are immediately.

That is the current status. Just one ot two grains found so far.

Pandaneko

Here, no photos, but we have seen them.

Here is what Mr Ueno of JAXA said next. He did not say a lot.

Mr Ueno of JAXA said:

During the first work we removed the top and bottom of the cannister. That allowed us to look into chamber A. That is the status.

Grains entered through its side port (of the cannister?). The interior is divided into two chambers and we are curently looking at only one of them.

Pandaneko

Not terribly interesting, now follow Q & A session. I once thought that I might omit these unintersting parts, but decided not to.

Q & A session

Q: Mainichi newspaper

How many did you find, by naked eyes and by microscope?

A by Mr Mukai:

We have not counted them exatly, the number depends on how you look at them. Those identified as grains by microscope, there are only two at the moment. Those inmobile ones, we do not know if they are grains, or perhaps they are inmobile, stuck (on the surface?), we do not know yet.

We are examinig them one by one under microscope with the maginication of 100. Extensive search is very time consuming.

Q: At least 10, by naked eyes?

A by Mr Mukai of JAXA:

At least 10. maybe a little more, perhaps.

Q by Nihone Keizai newspaper:

What are the sizes of those seen unde microscope? Also, those seen by naked eyes?

I understand that main ones are those which went into the catchers (chambers) and there is a possibility of some wondering into the cannister. Is that it? More possibility with those inside the catchers?

A by Mr Mukai:

We have not set a scale against the photos, but they are of the order of 10 microns, not as large as 0.1 mm, can be a little larger than 10 microns.

Those seen by naked eyes might be about 1 mm in size, perhaps? The bolts you see are M3 in size and if we use them as our scales they might be a little larger than 1 mm, I think.

Pandaneko

Here, you see? Their very first announcment after X-raying did say "No grains larger than 1 mm were found. They are now contradicting it, I think... This is the last translation for now for today.

Re the 1 mm detection tolerance: I'm willing to bet that was kind of a guess on their part at the smallest particles they could have possibly detected during the x-ray examination.

That had to be a pretty powerful x-ray machine in the first place to blast through the metal of the canister; not too surprising if the radiation passed right through these small non-metallic particles without making much of an impression.

Thanks, one mistery (to me) has evaporated, I think. It is really gratifying to get this kind of comments after spending some of my time on translating the 5 July press briefing. That is exactly what I wanted to get out from it. I will continue translating. Thanks again, Neprev!

Pandaneko

Here continues my translation of the first major post landing press conference.

A: (by Prof Kawaguchi to the same question asked earlier)

The sampler (chambers, I think) is like this and the (inner shutter, I think) tube is supposed to rotate like this. (He is here showing a mockup model)

The sampler horn is pulled up and there is a possibility that something on the horn might go into the container because it is kept open. (I do not know what this container means, perhaps the sample cannister, Pandaneko)

However, I am not saying that those are from Itokawa. They may well have been of terrestrial origin.

Also, answering youre question of if they will all go only into the collection chambers I will say that there is a possibility that they ended up elsewhere.

Q: Japan TV

Do you already know the shapes of those grains?

A: (by Mr Mukai)

This photo has the maximum resolution and we do not know their shapes.

Q: Tokyo Shimbun newspaper

Re those two grains found inside the chamber A, are these less than what you expected?, or do you think there are more to be found? What is the size of the needle point?

A: (by Mr Mukai)

Predicting the numer is difficult. We did not have any preconceived idea. There are similar looking dark spots, for instance, and for the moment we think they are scratches of some sort.

It is clear to us that there are other grains to be found and the current status is one of trying to find more of those.

My preliminary calculation tells me that there should be at least 100 grains of terrestrial origin. In fact, there can be as many as hundreds, perhaps even 10,000 from the Earth.

This is based on my certain sets of assumptions and I am not exactly sure if they are right... In any event, there should be more than two or three grains.


May I repeat that we are still investigating. The extreme end of the manipulator cannot be seen, less than one micron.

Q: Kyodou Tsushin

Sample catcher A, when was it operational?

A: (by Prof Kawaguchi)
The chamber A was operational at the second landing, B was operational at the first.

Q: (Kyodou Tsushin)

Any further work will be done after finishing with A?

A: (by Mr Ueno)

Yes, we will move on to B only after thoroughly cataloguing those in A. We are still looking right now at A with the largest resolution, but really good results are very limited due to this resolution limit.

(More to follow, Pandaneko)

Pandaneko, many thanks for the excellent job you are doing in translating the press conference. Your translations are providing new additional information. Please keep on with the translations.

In particular we now know which chamber was open at which landing attempt.



So the two small grains were found in the 'previously unopened/clean' chamber A which was use during the second touch and go landing. As the bullet did not fire and the touch down time was very short (~1sec), I can see why they might think that these could just as easily be terrestrial.

Since that conference it has been reported that they have found many more grains - given the shape of these chambers (see attached) they might easily have been found in the bottom of chamber A. Or maybe they have now opened chamber B, which was used during the bump and bounce 30 min first landing? We will just have to wait and see.




Yes, this is correct. I think they call it the 'catcher' just to avoid confusion with the outer container.

This news just in.

Mr Mukai, technical adviser at JAXA said on Monday 12 July;

1. Press briefings will be conducted from now on every Monday.
2. Most of the grains found so far are thought to be of Earth origin.
3. There will be more grains to be found.
4. He personally thinks that there will be Itokawa grains.
5. They are trying to come up with more efficient ways of recovery.

Pandaneko