Hayabusa2 Asteroid Sample Return Mission PDF Download

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 41. Chapters: Dawn (spacecraft), Hayabusa, Hayabusa 2, Hayabusa Mk2, List of asteroids visited by spacecraft, MarcoPolo-R, Marco Polo (spacecraft), Near Earth Asteroid Prospector, NEAR Shoemaker, OSIRIS-REx, Sample return mission, Stardust (spacecraft), Timeline of Solar System exploration, Vesta (spacecraft). Excerpt: Hayabusa, literally "Peregrine Falcon") was an unmanned spacecraft developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to return a sample of material from a small near-Earth asteroid named 25143 Itokawa to Earth for further analysis. Hayabusa, formerly known as MUSES-C for Mu Space Engineering Spacecraft C, was launched on 9 May 2003 and rendezvoused with Itokawa in mid-September 2005. After arriving at Itokawa, Hayabusa studied the asteroid's shape, spin, topography, colour, composition, density, and history. In November 2005, it landed on the asteroid and collected samples in the form of tiny grains of asteroidal material, which were returned to Earth aboard the spacecraft on 13 June 2010. The spacecraft also carried a detachable minilander, MINERVA, which failed to reach the surface. Denis J. P. Moura (left) and Junichiro Kawaguchi (right) at the 2010 International Astronautical Congress (IAC)Other spacecraft, notably Galileo and NEAR Shoemaker both sent by NASA, have visited asteroids before, but the Hayabusa mission was the first time that an attempt was made to return an asteroid sample to Earth for analysis. In addition, Hayabusa was the first spacecraft designed to deliberately land on an asteroid and then take off again (NEAR Shoemaker made a controlled descent to the surface of 433 Eros in 2000, but it was not designed as a lander and was eventually deactivated after it arrived). Technically, Hayabusa was not designed to "land"; it simply touches the surface with its sample capturing device and...