[X] My Assistant

[mike]

Sure, it must have affected it a little.. maybe so little that no one can actually measure it, but I theorize that it affected it nonetheless.

[tedstryk]

Sure, it must have affected it a little.. maybe so little that no one can actually measure it, but I theorize that it affected it nonetheless.

Well, yes. Just like when I stomp my foot it effects the motion of the earth. Technically yes, but not in any serious way.

[mike]

An effect is an effect..

[Phil Stooke]

Ted: "when I stomp my foot it effects the motion of the earth."

Watch it, Ted, I've got a hot coffee here...

Phil

[dvandorn]

I'm sure NEAR's thrusters affected Eros' motion a very, very small (probably unmeasurable) amount. And you can't really fault the NEAR team -- they hadn't planned out this landing prior to the flight, and so hadn't prepared specific programming and command strings until actually rather late in the mission.

They had no idea whether or not they would survive the landing, so they didn't make any firm plans about what to do after touchdown. It was only after the touchdown, when they saw just how much data was left unreceived but still on the spacecraft's recorder (at least two and maybe three more pictures, the final taken from just a few feet above the surface, is what I've heard), that they decided to see if they couldn't hop up, re-point the high gain at Earth, and send that last little bit of data before they settled down again. And by the time they decided to go ahead and try, they discovered that NEAR's thrusters had continued firing -- to fuel depletion.

I did hear somewhere that the best spectroscopy readings they got during the mission were received after touchdown -- only at that point were they getting a really good spectrum of the surface material and not a suspected, misleading microns-thick layer of non-indigenous dust and gasses... in fact, if anyone has any hard data about that story, I'd love to hear it.

-the other Doug

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

I haven't heard anything about the X-ray spectrometer being used after landing, and of course the near-IR spectrometer had failed long ago -- but they certainly got the only usable data they ever got from the gamma-ray spectrometer after landing; it had turned out to be simply too insensitive for use from orbit.

[dvandorn]

OK -- it certainly must have been the gamma-ray spectrometer I was thinking of. Just a lack of sensitivity, eh? I had heard something about the surface layer discussed... though, of course, upon reaching a half-century upon this Earth, I suppose my memory could fade on me, here and there...

-the other Doug

[lyford]

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.

Given recent events, are you going to retract the retraction?
Though, within theoretical limits, anything can still happen, and it ain't over until the upside down parachute trigger deceleration sensors fail upon reentry....

[Rakhir]

I did hear somewhere that the best spectroscopy readings they got during the mission were received after touchdown -- only at that point were they getting a really good spectrum of the surface material and not a suspected, misleading microns-thick layer of non-indigenous dust and gasses... in fact, if anyone has any hard data about that story, I'd love to hear it.

-the other Doug

Gamma-ray spectrums were collected on the surface from 2 detectors during a 7 days period.
The chart of the results can be found here.

Rakhir

[ljk4-1]

ASTRO NEWS BRIEFS

Hayabusa Mission in Jeopardy

The woes keep mounting for Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft, which is
attempting to bring the first-ever sample of an asteroid back to Earth. At
a press conference on Wednesday, officials of the Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency revealed that the craft has not regained full attitude
stability since briefly touching down on its target, 25143 Itokawa, on
November 25th. Moments after the landing a serious fuel leak triggered an
emergency shutdown, and since then radio transmissions from Hayabusa have
been weak and intermittent.

"The recovery operation from the safe mode is not going well," noted project manager Junichiro Kawaguchi. Worse, there's been no confirmation that the
craft fired any metal pellets into the surface when it landed, so it probably did
not acquire a sample as first thought. Until engineers regain full control of the spacecraft and understand the state of its thruster system, Hayabusa can't be commanded to return to Earth. The command won't occur any sooner than December 14th.

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1634_1.asp

[amezz]

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

S.MATSU intend to upload Japanese article at 11:00 (14 Dec 2:00 UT) or so here http://smatsu.air-nifty.com/lbyd/

Now English text available here http://mole.den.hokudai.ac.jp/jspace/index...yD%2F20051214-2

[ermar]

"The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced earlier today that it was delaying the return trip of its injured Hayabusa from the asteroid Itokawa until the spring of 2007. If the spacecraft can endure out there, 180 million miles away, and does make it out with the new exit strategy in 2007, it could arrive home in 2010."

http://planetary.org/news/2005/1214_Hayabu...parture_of.html

Any thoughts on whether the poor thing can survive another 2 years?

[mike]

It would certainly be nice if it did.

[dvandorn]

Unless there is a significant change in Hayabusa's condition, I have serious doubts that it will last several extra years. I'd like to be wrong, though.

-the other Doug

[RNeuhaus]

The doubt that I have is that how JAXA can be sure of its close position to Itokawa. The reports says that Hayabusa is hovering on Itokawa as a crazy spinning caused by the leakage of thrusters and also with an undeterminated distance (unstable distance), perhaps few hundreds kilometers.

The best way that JAXA can localize Hayabusa is after looking the Itokawa asteroide and not directly to Hayabusa.

After one year, where will he be if it was not under very small navigation control, perhaps only by the ion engine which has bit power for control altitude.

Rodolfo