Nov. 23rd, 2005

mmcirvin: (Default)
After some uncertainty, JAXA is now saying that the Hayabusa asteroid probe landed on Sunday, but did not get a sample. They're going to try again, but are not sure when—the time available to get the sample on its return trajectory is limited, though.

This has been a difficult mission; the failure of Hayabusa's reaction wheels means that they've been using gas thrusters for attitude control, and they've had to improvise. The resulting imprecision seems to have been what caused the loss of the Minerva mini-lander a little while back.

June 2025

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