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Japanese asteroid team reports on ball of rubble - Itokawa
Reuters on Yahoo ^
| 6/1/06
| Maggie Fox
Posted on 06/01/2006 10:21:27 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Japanese spacecraft that landed on an asteroid found a ball of rubble held loosely together by its own gravity, unlike other asteroids that have been visited, according to reports from the mission published on Thursday.
The spacecraft Hayabusa, whose name means "falcon" in Japanese, hovered over the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa last autumn, taking several measurements before landing briefly on the orbiting gravel pile.
Itokawa has two parts resembling the head and body of a sea otter, according to Akira Fujiwara and his colleagues in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
Previously studied asteroids appeared to be lumps of solid rock, but Itokawa is made up of loosely packed bits of sand and boulders, they said.
Their findings could have implications for deflecting asteroids that might pass too closely to the Earth in the future.
"We've never had a close-up look at such a small asteroid until now," said Takahiro Hiroi of Brown University in Rhode Island, who worked on the study, a joint U.S.-Japanese effort.
"Large asteroids such as Eros are completely covered with a thick regolith -- a blanket of looser material created by space weathering. With Itokawa, we believe we have witnessed a developing stage of the formation of this regolith."
Itokawa is very small, just 500 yards (metres) long. But it is close, orbiting just 321 million miles away from Earth. Although it does not threaten to collide with Earth, it makes a tempting scientific target.
NEAR MISS
Hayabusa very nearly did not make it.
The little spacecraft, now bringing a capsule of samples back to Earth, uses an electronic ion propulsion system, whose efficiency should be critical to future missions in deep space.
At one point, Hayabusa lost communication with its controllers, wrote Erik Asphaug of the University of California, Santa Cruz in a commentary in Science.
"Its hydrazine (fuel) had leaked away shortly after the second sample collection attempt. Two of the reaction wheels had failed and the battery was dead. Adding insult to injury, Minerva -- intended to be the first asteroid surface robot -- had been released during an unexpected maneuver and was lost to space," he added.
"Yet despite these heartbreaking setbacks, Hayabusa has been a stunning success both for asteroid science and for deep space concept testing."
Asphaug said information delivered by the spacecraft "enhances our understanding of near-Earth objects. Near-Earth objects are not only important scientifically -- our planet formed from them -- but have also become political hot potatoes, given the growing pressure to do something to mitigate the risks they may pose to Earth."
The spacecraft, launched in 2003, is expected to glide back to Earth in 2010 and crash-land in the Australian desert.
TOPICS: Japan; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: asteroid; asteroiditokawa; catastrophism; hayabusa; itokawa; japan; japanese; rubble
The 548-metre long asteroid, '25143 Itokawa', is seen nearly 300 million km (186 million miles) from earth in this handout picture taken November 20, 2005 by the Japanese unmanned Hayabusa and released by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). A Japanese spacecraft that landed on an asteroid found a ball of rubble held loosely together by its own gravity, unlike other asteroids that have been visited, according to reports from the mission published on Thursday. (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency/Handout/Reuters)
To: NormsRevenge
taking several measurements before landing briefly on the orbiting gravel pile.I was wondering where we were going to get our gravel from in the future.
2
posted on
06/01/2006 10:34:52 PM PDT
by
taxesareforever
(Never forget Matt Maupin)
To: NormsRevenge
That ball is actually the egg of...Godzilla!!!!
To: NormsRevenge
Wonder if they found any "space peanuts"?
4
posted on
06/02/2006 4:12:34 AM PDT
by
Tinman93
To: KevinDavis
5
posted on
06/03/2006 6:44:22 PM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
(https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
6
posted on
06/03/2006 7:25:29 PM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
(https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
To: NormsRevenge
500 yards (metres) "Cannot cast from type 'yards' to type 'metres'"
7
posted on
06/03/2006 7:30:37 PM PDT
by
bobdsmith
8
posted on
03/19/2016 12:18:46 PM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
(Here's to the day the forensics people scrape what's left of Putin off the ceiling of his limo.)
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