[X] My Assistant

[Bjorn Jonsson]

Congratulations to the Japanese on an apparently successful mission - hopefully a sample will be returned home successfully. And thanks to everyone here from Japan who has made it easier to follow this exciting mission over the past several hours. It seems I can go to sleep now .

[jamescanvin]

Congratulations to the Japanese on an apparently successful mission - hopefully a sample will be returned home successfully. And thanks to everyone here from Japan who has made it easier to follow this exciting mission over the past several hours. It seems I can go to sleep now .

Here, here!

It's great to see how many Japanese members have joined this forum recently, thanks for all your help in keeping us filled in about this fantastic mission!

James

[nop]

FYI, here is another translation from the Japanese huge BBS 2-channel :-)
I cannot assure this post completely because it is anonymous-based BBS, but I strongly hope that it's true!
Thanks a lot for the LIPO-D gag team of this forum!

"2005-11-25 22:46:02pm

I got an e-mail personally from the ISAS blogger (He's my acquaintance).

- (snip)

- If I cannot update the blog because of access concentration, we will try to send you messages using a paper or something in front of the video camera.

- We are so encouraged that some of you are planning to send us LIPOVITAN-Ds for cheer us.

- But I drank only TWO bottles of the four. ;-)

[ElkGroveDan]

- But I drank only TWO bottles of the four. ;-)

That's what I always tell me wife when she comes home.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Yes -- I'm going to have to retract some of the nasty things I've said recently about the management of Japan's space program. Japan finally seems on the verge of getting a very badly needed major success in their long-suffering space program, and congratulations to them. But my main fear is still that -- since they did it for only $150 million -- this may set off a trend back toward trying to fly seriously underfunded missions instead of recognizing that this success may have been an infrequent good-luck case.

Technologically, the main lesson seems to be that landing on a small body is simply difficult. Hayabusa's difficulties during its previous three landing maneuvers were apparently mostly because the surface of the asteroid was far rougher than expected -- pocked with very big, protruding individual boulders -- and this consistently confused the craft's laser altitude and obstacle sensors.

[odave]

Great news so far! Add my high-five to the JAXA/ISAS team. Hopefully there's enough fuel left to bring the falcon home.

Thanks also to all the new UMSF members in Japan for keeping us in the loop.

[mars loon]

Congratulations to all on the JAXA/ Hayabusa team on a great success.

A Fantastic mission !!!!

Please continue the updates and pictures. thank you

[nop]

Several japanese presses have reported that the metal ball was surely shot. Anyway, please wait for the official press release to get details. Stay tuned.

[Phil Stooke]

I've updated my composite of all the approach images:



And check this out:

http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/j/snews/2005/1125.shtml

latest images?

Phil

[jamescanvin]

http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/j/snews/2005/1125.shtml

latest images?

Phil

That's from the previous attempt (20th Nov)

EDIT

Here is the google translation

[hektor]

I would be in favour to perfect the design based on the lessons learnt, build a series of Hayabusas, and start visiting all the NEOs one by one.

[jamescanvin]

I would be in favour to perfect the design based on the lessons learnt, build a series of Hayabusas, and start visiting all the NEOs one by one.  

Definately!

There are a lot of different types of asteroid out there, I would say one of the best things that JAXA could do with there budget in the future would be to build 5 or 6 Hayabusa MkII's and send them to different types of NEO asteroid. That would be a fantastic set of missions, especially for less than $1billion!

Shame it won't happen.

[nop]

There are a lot of different types of asteroid out there, I would say one of the best things that JAXA could do with there budget in the future would be to build 5 or 6 Hayabusa MkII's and send them to different types of NEO asteroid. That would be a fantastic set of missions, especially for less than $1billion!

Yes, JAXA people also seems to have such hope. In JAXA webpage, Prof. Fujiwara says in his personal opnion:
"Asteroids are classified by their reflection spectrum. Among various types, the S-type and the C-type are the most popular. Itokawa is a S-type asteroid. So I hope to plan a series of missions, for example, to go to S-type asteroids next. "

[hektor]

I hope so, but please don't start a new design from scratch.

Re-cur-ring. Flight pro-ven.

[nop]

Brief digests from Matsuura's blog:

- One of the thruster was uncontrollable after the lift-off from Itokawa.
- They decided to transit to the safe mode, in which all the thrusters stop.
- Hayabusa succeedingly entered to the safe mode "like a phoenix"
- In order to deal with the disorder in the thruster, data download was stopped temporally. So please wait for a while for data analysis results.
- The next press conference will be around 16:00pm in JST.

For details, please refer to the nicer translations by Mr. RogueEngineer in Matsuura's blog :-) http://smatsu.air-nifty.com/lbyd/

(Sorry for typo in the initial version of this post and thanks for pointing it out > hektor)