While a capsule carrying samples descended to the surface using a parachute, the spacecraft disintegrated in the atmosphere after a journey of seven years.
Staff | June 15, 2010
On June 14, the capsule launched by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa landed in Woomera, Australia, after having visited the Itokawa asteroid on a journey that began in 2003.
The main objective of the Hayabusa (which means “peregrine falcon” in Japanese) was to collect samples of material below the asteroid's surface and bring them back to Earth. The analysis of the contents of the capsule will confirm if the probe was successful in collecting the samples or not, since the mission had troubles from the start. Bad luck caused a loss of control of the spacecraft during the critical phase of the approach, in which the probe was supposed to hover a few meters from the surface of the asteroid, collect samples and depositing them in the return capsule.
If the probe was successful in extracting samples and bringing them back to Earth, this type of material will now be examined in a laboratory for the first time ever. For reasons of orbital mechanics, the celestial body chosen was Itokawa, a small asteroid of only half a kilometer long.
Other problems that affected the journey of Hayabusa were failures in its engines and the gyroscopes that guided it, as well as the loss of minirobot MINERVA, which was supposed to explore the surface of the asteroid.
