Hayabusa

Time for a little update in space news:

Ever heard of Hayabusa? Well, this little Japanese spacecraft has been through a LOT in the past couple of years. It traveled 1.25 billion miles, visited an asteroid, had major tech failures, lost all contact with Earth for seven weeks, stayed in space 3 years longer than planned, and STILL managed to make it home, thanks to some ingenuity on the part of the mission control.

Even with the major success of landing the probe in the Australian outback recently, scientists are still unsure of whether or not the probe actually succeeded in collecting dust from the asteroid, which was the main part of its mission. The probe was supposed to fire pellets at the asteroid, chipping off some rocks to collect, but this part of the mission was unsuccessful. We can only hope that the spacecraft managed to take in some dust instead. Scientists will know within the next couple of weeks whether dust was collected.

Even so, the sheer accomplishment of landing a probe on an asteroid and returning it to Earth will earn Hayabusa a permanent slot in space lore. As the Washington Post puts it, this mission falls somewhere between the return of the crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft to Earth and the fact that the Mars Rovers, built to last 90 days, are still returning information to us about Mars six years later. This is a major accomplishment. Congratulations, Japan! Sorry about your World Cup loss though...