[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

It's a bold mission design - you have to give them that

Doug

[tedstryk]

Even if the sampling/landing fails, If it provides global coverage at 1 meter resolution of a world this size, it will have provided some interesting data. It is strange to be 20,000 km out from an arrival and have the object being approached still be a mere speck!

[RNeuhaus]

"...asteroid Itokawa located in a belt between of Mars and Jupiter...." 
Rodolfo, Itokawa is a Near Earth asteroid, in fact now both (asteroid and probe) lies only slightly outside Earth orbit...
For infos, take a look here:
Don Yeomans article
or here:
Planetary Society

Dilo, Thank you for pointing this out. As Itokawa is an asteroide, then I tought it is located on that belt... It is a another surprise for me because any asteroide is not always located on that belt but also wandering in anywhere? I am starting to think that I have no good concept to differentiate between comets and asteroids. Now I am guessing that any comets are defined as ones which loops around sun with periapsis and apoapisis. Otherwise, the asteroids does not loops around the sun and they remains stable on their orbits? They can be in any distance from sun?

According to the picture, the probe has no long legs (a land must be very FLAT!!) to land on asteroid and it will touch down, with the propulsion ion engine will be turned off previously. This is to prevent the jets from contaminating the asteroid surface by coming too close to it. I am afraid that the probe might bounce back into the space...

"The other challange is when the next task -- collecting a sample -- may be an even greater challenge. The surface gravity of the asteroid is really small and is less than 1/100,000 of that of the Earth. Anything -- a drill or any other digging tool - that is not secured by a strong anchor into the surface may just be pushed away before the drill actually bores a hole." I would imagine that each legs must have own motor with screws in order to nail down the surface....

"Since we do not know what the asteroid is really made of, there is no way of knowing how hard the surface will be or how difficult this collection of surface dust will be. The Japanese are employing a simple, direct strategy -- to "break the surface" by using a tiny pyrotechnic device to fire 'sampler horns' into the three targeted sites on the asteroid." This is another risk or adventure. I don't know how it will hapen with its explosion wave (in space has no air and I seems that the explosion wave won't push to the probe?? ).

"Once the collections of surface dust are completed, the spacecraft will start the engine, lift off, and resume its hovering position at 100 meters altitude as it waits for the next order from Mission Control. Here does not say anything about the mechanism in order to make sure that the samples are already collected!!! The samples will no be greater than one gram for Earth gravity." As the most samples are in dust, I assume, one gram of dust is a enough for a facial makup.

Rodolfo

P.D. "Ithalic" are extracts from the Planetary Society

[paxdan]

It's a bold mission design - you have to give them that
Doug

indeed it is, they are cramming a host of tech into a very compact mission. The low mass of the target simplifies things somewhat making the sampling the result of a heliocentric orbital rendezvous as opposed to a landing involving the complexities of orbiting and/or descending around a larger mass.

But a sample and return from an asteroid as well, gotta hand it to them it will be quite a first!

Heck like tedstryk i'll be happy if they manage some decent imaging. I am really looking forward to seeing what this object looks like, the scale is almost human! So only a matter of weeks before a new world hoves into view.

rubbing hands in anticipation.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Abstract #4024 in the new "Dust In Planetary Systems" abstracts ( http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/dust2005/pdf/program.pdf ) confirms something hinted at in a recent Space.com article: because of the delay in its arrival at asteroid Itokawa due to the weakening of its SEP drive by that big 2003 solar flare, Hayabusa will now sample only two sites on the asteroid -- instead of the originally planned three -- before departing for home.

[paxdan]

Hayabusa will now sample only two sites on the asteroid -- instead of the originally planned three -- before departing for home.

This question was asked earlier in the thread and i've looked but can't find an answer myself, but do we know if they have a means of detecting if the sampling has been successful?

[paxdan]

Well i've been doing some digging and found this website which has some more info and photos. On this webpage there are a couple of short movies, one showing a animation of the approach and sampling sequence, the other showing a test of the hopper mobility system.

I still don't see any sort of page set up to handle the raw image release. Bah.

[tedstryk]

Cool!

[Toma B]

Today:
Distance from Itokawa : 11,320km

Geting realy close now!!!

[Toma B]

Does anybody knows where can I find more Earth images from Hayabusa's flyby May18 2004???
I have find only one image taken from far away (295.000 km.)



Flyby's closest point was 3700 km.... That's allmost 80 times closer than on this image...

[MaG]

I found something!

http://www.jaxa.jp/missions/projects/sat/e...cknumber_e.html

and here bigger version http://www.planetary.org/news/2004/images/...yby_768x768.jpg

[paxdan]

Does anybody knows where can I find more Earth images from Hayabusa's flyby May18  2004???

OK so i've been looking again for a Hayabusa image release site and found this section of the jaxa website called the digital archive the search bars have drop down fields but frustratingly the 'mission' drop down field where you might expect hayabusa to get a mention is blank. I can't even find the image you posted above on this site.

Somewhere someone must have access to the raw images. I know hayabusa stuff is going to be archived by the PDS but doesn't this happen to processed stuff sometime after it is taken? Oh well back to fiddling with URLs.

Would it be rude to email Don Yeomans? I really do want to follow this 'live'.

[paxdan]

I found something!

http://www.jaxa.jp/missions/projects/sat/e...cknumber_e.html

and here bigger version http://www.planetary.org/news/2004/images/...yby_768x768.jpg

Yup and you can get to this page too, the two flash movies are quite good fun. Will someone on a windows box tell me what the .exe screensaver does.

[djellison]

Dont think much of their co-registering of the R,G,B's for that - it's a bit off

This is perhaps a smidge better
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_images/hayb.jpg

Doug

[Bob Shaw]

Doug:

You can see my house from up there!

Bob Shaw

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