[X] My Assistant

[Toma B]

Even if it does succeed, and eventually find its way back home it would be a big disappointment for that science team to open capsule and find nothing at all inside...

[ljk4-1]

Even if it does succeed, and eventually find its way back home it would be a big disappointment for that science team to open capsule and find nothing at all inside...

Could any surface material be ingrained into the collecting area from the act of landing? Translation: Maybe they can scrape some dirt off the ship.

[djellison]

Well, only the little entry capsule comes back - I assume the spacecraft itself will either be diverted, or burn up after seperation.

And anything not tucked away deep inside that entry capsule will be subject to very very high temperatures and Mach 25+ airflow.

So the only thing you can get back is whatever is IN the sample capsule.


Doug

[ljk4-1]

Well, only the little entry capsule comes back - I assume the spacecraft itself will either be diverted, or burn up after seperation.

And anything not tucked away deep inside that entry capsule will be subject to very very high temperatures and Mach 25+ airflow.

So the only thing you can get back is whatever is IN the sample capsule.
Doug

Maybe they could have another craft intercept Hayabusa near Earth to see if any surface material is on the probe and recover that.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Cripes, if you're going to go to the trouble to do that, it would be infinitely more productive to just send that second craft to do another NEO sampling run of its own. "Hera", by the way, is one of the few pending Discovery proposals whose team is willing to talk about it in considerable detail in advance -- it would use contact pads coated with a thick layer of silicone grease to pick up several hundred grams of dust and gravel from the surfaces of as many as three separate NEOs before returning to Earth. It's always struck me as one of the more likely missions to be selected next time, and the probable failure of Hayabusa makes it more so:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/metsoc2001/pdf/5089.pdf
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/metsoc2001/pdf/5225.pdf
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/metsoc2002/pdf/5301.pdf
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2002/pdf/1583.pdf
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2003/pdf/1032.pdf
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2003/pdf/1047.pdf
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2004/pdf/1716.pdf
(plus 4 different abstracts at http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2005/pdf/sess93.pdf )

[edstrick]

One of the half science, half engineering findings from the Apollo missions was that highly structured sampling stragegies tended to be marginally useful. The original idea was to do radial sampling from the rim of small, fresh impact craters outwards. The continuous thick ejecta near the crater is inverted, with the deepest material excavated on top and concentrated near the crater, and stuff from near the surface on the bottom and further out.

Unfortunately, it really didn't prove very useful most of the time. Too much of what was hit was either relatively homogenous, like samples from only one lava flow, or had been jumbled and churned till original stratigraphy was lost, as in highland samples from Apollos 14, and 15-17.

What DID turn out to be super useful was the sampling rake. This was a rake shaped like a dustpan. One end open, the back curved up and over but not all the way over the opening. Drag it through a square meter or two of regolith and you'd collect a sample bag full of "Walnut-sized" rocks. Total amount might be a half kilogram for a dozen or more lumps. A walnut-sized rock is usually plenty big enough to have a good statistical sample of the crystals in the original rock it was busted out of, but is so small you can collect a lot of them. And in any grab-sample from well churned highland regolith, as at the Apollo 16 site, you get a pretty representative sample of whatever got busted up and churned to make that particular patch of regolith. Only with some of the highland rocks were the original rocks such coarse grained (centimeter size mineral grains and larger) that the walnut sized rocks weren't a good statistical sample of the original minerology.

Points to bear in mind during sample return. Hayabusa hoped to get rock chips as well as regolith dust. Hope we got some dust the first attempt.

[GregM]

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

[attachment=2546:attachment]

And check this out:

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

latest images?

Phil

Phil

I see your work here is also on Hogaland's web site, main page.

Please don't tell me that you have joined the crew that preaches about the face on Mars, Pyramids on the Moon, and that Iapatus is an ancient Death Star.

I don't think that I could take it! Or, is it like the Borg: ultimatly we we will all be assimilated.

[ermar]

I think it's been established that Hoagland has no compunctions against taking others' work without their permission.

Iapatus is an ancient Death Star.

and we all know that Mimas is the real Death Star...

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

An unmanned version of that sampling rake is exactly what the twin landers in the "Moonrise" New Frontiers proposal would use for their samples of the Aitken Basin -- although, if they're like the single lander in Michael Duke's earlier "Moonraker" Discovery concept, they would have had a second arm with a regular sampling scoop as a backup.

[Phil Stooke]

GregM, I told the Hoaxlanders to remove my image and name from their site, noting that I considered their work fraudulent. But I can't be bothered to fight them.

Phil

[Toma B]

So really "What's Up With Hayabusa"...
There have been few hi-res images posted on JAXA's official site, and after that NOTHING AT ALL!!!
Out of thousands of Hi-res images taken of Itokawa we have seen 5 or 6...
Will there be a new release of data (pictures) anytime soon, or have we seen all?

[Phil Stooke]

I don't know about JAXA releases... but in mid-March at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston there should be some new information. The abstracts will be up on the Lunar and Planetary Institute website:

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

in a few weeks and I expect there will be a lot of new information. (I've already seen one of them).

Phil

[akibow]

JAXA succeed to get telemetry data from HAYABUSA.

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

[helvick]

JAXA succeed to get telemetry data from HAYABUSA.

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

Nice update from the JAXA folks. The chances of a successful return may be fairly limited but this is one little baby that I'd really love to see make it home.

Best of luck to " it is quick the ぶ " and the team.

[akibow]

summary of press conference is here
http://smatsu.air-nifty.com/lbyd/2006/03/7...6.html#comments (Japanese)
http://jspace.misshie.jp/index.php?cmd=rea...yD%2F20060307-2 (translation)