- Courtesy of Akihiro Ikeshita
- Courtesy: JAXA
So far…so good.
The return of Japan’s Hayabusa spacecraft is near – marking the end of a seven-year journey that may be bringing back samples of its exploration target — asteroid Itokawa — back to Earth.
Flight controllers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) report that the space probe is on target for a precision entry into Australia and a parachute landing of the spacecraft’s sample container within Australia’s Woomera Prohibited Area.
Hayabusa is expected to fireball its way toward Earth over a vast, unpopulated area of Australia at roughly midnight locally, or 10 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday, June 13th. Scientists are hopeful that tiny specimens of Itokawa may have been snared during two landings of the probe on the space rock.
Both a ground and airborne welcoming committee is to be in the vicinity of the landing.
A NASA-sponsored airborne campaign is being staged to record the historical event. That campaign makes use of the space agency’s Douglas DC-8 airborne laboratory packed with nearly 30 scientists and their scientific instruments.
Human-made meteor
“Hayabusa is hurtling toward Earth at an immense speed, comparable to that of an asteroid impact,” said Peter Jenniskens, the observation campaign’s principal investigator and a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., and the SETI Institute, Mountain View, Calif.
Jenniskens points out that the capsule that protects the asteroid sample will be only 6,500 feet ahead of the rest of the spacecraft, which will break into numerous pieces, essentially making it a human-made meteor.
The team of airborne scientists will be studying what happens when the spacecraft and sample return capsule heat up high in the atmosphere.
The reentry of the specially protected Hayabusa capsule will provide technological insight into the heat shield that designers and engineers can use while developing future exploration vehicles.
JAXA’s Hayabusa is a “trail-blazer” in more ways than one. It is expected to be the second fastest human-made object to return to Earth.
Back in January 2006, NASA’s Stardust sample return capsule set the record re-entry speed of 7.95 miles per second!
By Leonard David