{"id":1471,"date":"2013-05-09T13:19:28","date_gmt":"2013-05-09T17:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/blog\/?p=1471"},"modified":"2013-05-09T13:19:28","modified_gmt":"2013-05-09T17:19:28","slug":"first-asteroid-mission-triumphant-despite-many-troubles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/first-asteroid-mission-triumphant-despite-many-troubles\/","title":{"rendered":"First Asteroid Mission, Triumphant Despite Many Troubles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ten years ago today &#8212; May 9, 2003 &#8212; Japan launched a daring asteroid sample-return mission from the Uchinoura Space Center, atop an M-5 rocket.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov\/planetary\/image\/hayabusa.jpg\" \/><br \/>\n<em>(Hayabusa. Image from the National Space Science Data Center.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Originally called Muses-C, <a href=\"http:\/\/nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov\/nmc\/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=2003-019A\">Hayabusa<\/a> (&#8220;Falcon&#8221;) was a difficult mission to begin with, but experienced a series of setbacks that made its ultimate success all the more impressive.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In late 2003, a large solar flare degraded the spacecraft&#8217;s solar panels, reducing the power available to its ion engines. The original rendezvous date in early summer 2005 was pushed back to September.<\/li>\n<li>On July 31, 2004, Hayabusa&#8217;s X-axis reaction wheel failed.<\/li>\n<li>The spacecraft successfully rendezvoused with 25143 Itokawa (1998 SF36) &#8212; an asteroid\u00a0 about as big as three\u00a0football stadiums at 550 x 180 meters (1800 x 590 feet) &#8212; on September 12, 2005. Hayabusa established itself in a heliocentric orbit for station-keeping about 20 km (12.4 mi)\u00a0from the asteroid.<\/li>\n<li>On October 3, 2005 Hayabusa&#8217;s Y-axis reaction wheel failed, leaving its attitude control subsystem operating only on &#8220;one reaction wheel and two chemical thrusters.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Hayabusa mapped the asteroid&#8217;s surface in two phases, then began descent operations. During the second touchdown rehearsal on November 12th, the spacecraft released a &#8220;lander\/hopper&#8221; called Minerva; unfortunately, &#8220;the release was at a higher altitude than planned&#8230;. and it is believed Minerva moved off into space without landing.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>A week later, on November 19, Hayabusa again descended toward the asteroid, and released a &#8220;target marker&#8221; before contact was lost as it fell to the surface.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p>Later telemetry indicated that Hayabusa hit the surface at 20:40 UT 19 November (5:40 a.m. JST 20 November) at roughly 10 cm\/sec and bounced. It bounced again at 21:10 and then landed at 21:30 within about 30 meters of the target marker. At 21:58 (6:58 a.m. JST 20 November) it was commanded to make an emergency ascent. The craft remained on the surface for about half an hour but did not collect a sample. This was the first ever controlled landing on an asteroid and first ascent from any other solar system body except the Moon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>On November 25, Hayabusa touched down again, and fired two &#8220;sampling bullets&#8221; at the surface. Telemetry could not verify that they actually fired; nevertheless, Hayabusa lifted off.<\/li>\n<li>On December 9, ground controllers lost contact with the spacecraft, &#8220;presumably because of torques caused by a thruster leak which altered the pointing of the antenna.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Controllers restored communication in March 2006, and learned over the next several months that the spacecraft&#8217;s status was somewhat grim: low on fuel, two out of three reaction wheels inoperative, plus 4 out of 11 batteries had also stopped working. The spacecraft&#8217;s degraded solar cells and batteries were still sufficient to maintain thrust and attitude control with its xenon ion engine, and in April 2007 it started its journey Earth-ward.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When Hayabusa was a little outside the Moon&#8217;s orbit, it released its sample return capsule, which de-orbited on June 13, 2010 and landed near Woomera, Australia.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Subsequent examination of the sample return capsule showed that there were roughly 1500 dust particles, presumably from asteroid Itokawa.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well done, Hayabusa!<\/p>\n<p>You can learn more about this remarkable\u00a0mission at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jaxa.jp\/projects\/sat\/muses_c\/index_e.html\">this\u00a0Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) page<\/a>.<\/p>\n<a class=\"synved-social-button synved-social-button-share synved-social-size-24 synved-social-resolution-single synved-social-provider-facebook nolightbox\" data-provider=\"facebook\" target=\"_blank\" 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inline;width:24px;height:24px;margin: 0;padding: 0;border: none;box-shadow: none\" src=\"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/social-media-feather\/synved-social\/image\/social\/regular\/48x48\/mail.png\" \/><\/a><a class=\"synved-social-credit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"WordPress Social Media Feather\" href=\"http:\/\/synved.com\/wordpress-social-media-feather\/\" style=\"color:#444;text-decoration:none;font-size:8px;margin-left:5px;vertical-align:10px;white-space:nowrap\"><span>by <\/span><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: inline;margin:0;padding:0;width:16px;height:16px\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"feather\" src=\"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/social-media-feather\/synved-social\/image\/icon.png\" \/><\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ten years ago today &#8212; May 9, 2003 &#8212; Japan launched a daring asteroid sample-return mission from the Uchinoura Space Center, atop an M-5 rocket. (Hayabusa. Image from the National Space Science Data Center.) Originally called Muses-C, Hayabusa (&#8220;Falcon&#8221;) was a difficult mission to begin with, but experienced a series \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/first-asteroid-mission-triumphant-despite-many-troubles\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[211,26,11],"class_list":["post-1471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","tag-asteroid","tag-launch","tag-space-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1472,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471\/revisions\/1472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}