- Credit: JAXA
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has assessed the trajectory of its returning Hayabusa spacecraft and has confirmed that all is normal.
After a 7 year journey, the space probe is returning to Earth possibly carrying the collected samples of an asteroid.
JAXA has noted that it will implement a capsule reentry plan, one that calls for the capsule to parachute into Woomera, Australia.
Hayabusa is expected to fall to Earth at approximately midnight locally, or 10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Sunday, June 13th.
“The Hayabusa system is going well,” according to a JAXA press statement.
Ground recovery teams as well as airborne scientists are moving into position to record the spacecraft’s targeted fiery descent through Earth’s atmosphere – a human-made meteor.
A NASA Douglas DC-8 airborne laboratory from the space agency’s Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility at Palmdale, Calif., is carrying nearly 30 scientists and their instruments to record the fiery plunge.
Explains 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. : “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.”
The airborne team’s primary goal during the airborne mission is to study the Hayabusa capsule’s re-entry to gain technological insight into heat shield development.
Because of Hayabusa’s unique heat shield material, shape and the tremendous interplanetary re-entry speed of 7.58 miles per second, scientists expect its descent will provide new, valuable information about heat shields for computer models of re-entry conditions.
To keep an eye on the incoming mission and NASA’s airborne campaign to monitor the reentry, go to:
http://airborne.seti.org/hayabusa/
By Leonard David