Hayabusa Post-Landing & Science Results Options

[stevesliva]

JAXA found yet more than 100 of 10 micron size grains inside the chamber A, which was kept open for the second landing. At least a few of them are being sent out to NASA right now, and one each to other academic institutions.

All other major Japanese newspapers today carried similar stories about these newly found 100 or so grains. From what they say I am inclined to think at least some people within JAXA now think that some of them did come from Itokawa.

This sounds like fantastic news!

[pandaneko]

I got this news just before falling asleep.

Apparently, JAXA has since found more than 1,000 grains, perhaps inside the chamber A. Chamber B has not been opened yet.

I want to hear what NASA has to say, really...

Pandaneko

[pandaneko]

I am getting a bit weary of uploading my stuff one after another, but this thought might be of interest.

The capsule had been kept in class 100,000 environment, both in the clearn room at ISAS and at the assembly site pre-launch. Given the volume of the cannister (or one half of it) my back of envelope calculation tells me that potentially there can be as many as 20,000 of 5 micron size terrestrial particles in there.

However, we have not heard anything of that kind so far. Therefore, I am convinced that they purged them before launch and rotated the rotating door so that any more terrestrial particles would not get in.

If they can rotate the shutter door at Itokawa (We know they did) they must also have done it in flight in deep space while they still had enough electrical power, because we know that the collection chamber(s) were exposed to vaccum in flight. They must have opened the door before closing it again at Itokawa.

So, once again I think they came from Itokawa...

Pandaneko

[Stu]

Don't feel weary; you're our window on this mission's developments right now. We're all reading.

[ElkGroveDan]

Yes, Thanks again pandaneko. ElkGroveNeko thanks you too as he waits for his morning coffee.

[fredk]

The capsule had been kept in class 100,000 environment... potentially there can be as many as 20,000 of 5 micron size terrestrial particles in there.

How did you do this calculation? According to this source, class 100 000 means 700 particles 5 microns or larger in a volume of 1 cubic foot (US FED STD 209E), or 29 300 per cubic metre (ISO 14644-1). Isn't the cannister volume much less then a cubic metre?

[Drkskywxlt]

How much science can they realistically get out of this one small particle? No doubt they'll do a thorough investigation under a microscope, but then aren't they left with just blasting it in a mass spec and figuring out what it's made of? Is there anything else they can really do with such a small sample?

[Hungry4info]

I read that even if one grain was found, it could be cut into pieces, sent all over the world for study, and a variety of tests done on it. From what I understood, one grain would have been a treasure trove all by itself.

[Drkskywxlt]

I read that even if one grain was found, it could be cut into pieces, sent all over the world for study, and a variety of tests done on it. From what I understood, one grain would have been a treasure trove all by itself.

I guess that's my real question...how much can you divide such an incredibly small sample? And does dividing it so many times bring diminishing returns? This isn't like a rock brought back by Apollo.

[Juramike]

Even for just running a mass spect sample, there are a whole slew of mass spectrometry experiments that can be run. Each can give you different levels of information.

direct injection MS
HRMS
GCMS (gas chromatography on front end)
MS-MS
Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Mass spectrometry

and probably a whole bunch of new mass spectrometry techniques that haven't been mainstreamed yet.

I don't know how they would divide the grain, but I bet there are a lot of instrumentation labs that would love to analyze even a tiny bit.
And each technique might find new information.

[Phil Stooke]

The Stardust mission is showing what can be done with very small samples. We don't need the old Apollo 'football-sized rocks' any more.

Phil

[elakdawalla]

What Phil said. Just look at the abstracts from the 2010 oral session at LPSC on Stardust (PDF format, 4.5 MB) to see what kinds of detailed analyses can be done with tiny particles -- and those particles are ones that were spewed out of a comet's plumes and subsequently smashed at many km/s into aerogel. Hayabusa's particles were acquired in a much more gentle fashion, so will potentially be easier to interpret (or, at least, can be expected to look more similar to what they looked like when they were on the asteroid.)

[Leither]

If they can rotate the shutter door at Itokawa (We know they did) they must also have done it in flight in deep space while they still had enough electrical power, because we know that the collection chamber(s) were exposed to vaccum in flight. They must have opened the door before closing it again at Itokawa.

Not necessarily so. The design of the return container’s sleeve closure mechanism is such that only one chamber can be open at a time. At launch one chamber (A or B ) of the container was open - from a reliability point of view this makes perfect sense just encase the container closure mechanism doesn’t work. Imagine the frustration of going all the way to Itokawa only to find you can’t open the container, much better that it’s open at the start of the mission - one less thing to go wrong. However the disadvantage of having the chamber open at launch is the possibility that something could get into it, either at launch or on the way (cosmic dust). Which is why they collected launch site dust so as to eliminate it; also I think one of the scientists at the press conference said the particles don’t look like cosmic dust.

After the first aborted landing attempt, the sleeve mechanism would have rotated 120 degrees sealing the first chamber and opening the second chamber. This second chamber would not have been open at launch and would have been “clean”. After the 30 min landing the sleeve mechanism then would have rotated another 120 degrees and so both chambers would be then sealed. The sample container was then slid it the re-entry capsule for return to earth. It’s possible any particles still in the collection horn could have been dragged in behind the container as it was pushed into the capsule and these might (fingers-crossed) be the origin of particles they found on the outside of the container - or they could be terrestrial.

Let's wait and see what they find in the second chamber!!! Fingers and toes crossed!!!

The more I find out about this mission, it's design and the methodical way they are analysing the results, the more impressed I am.

[Drkskywxlt]

Oh, I know you don't need kilograms of anything, Phil. But, I still think what they're getting out of Hayabusa is much less than Stardust. Just trying to get a sense of how many ways you can slice and dice micro(?)grams of something and still get something useful at the end.

Thanks for the link, Emily.

[nprev]

Belated thanks to Pandaneko; you're our window on Hayabusa, man, please keep it coming!