I posted earlier on the return of the ion engine powered Hayabusa.
Hayabusa started its journey in 2003 and met up with the asteroid Itokawa in 2005. The plan was to fire small metal projectiles at the asteroid to generate small pea size samples of the asteroid. This plan failed when the projectile firing device failed to function. After a long journey the spacecraft returned to Earth in June this year.
The sample capsule released by the Hayabusa asteroid probe. (Mainichi)
Though the inner capsule had no mm sized particles as hoped, some dust was found in the sealed container. Until recently, many of the fine particles found in the capsule had been believed to be aluminum powder or dust that had slipped into the capsule on Earth during manufacturing or Hayabusa’s launch reports the Mainichi Daily News.
However, the research team collected some 100 particles that are smaller than 0.001 millimeters in size from the inner cylinder of the capsule, called the “sample catcher,” and concluded some of them may be cosmic materials. The particles, which are invisible to the human eye, were collected by remote control using a special Teflon spatula — about 6 millimeters long and 3 millimeters wide — and examined with an electron microscope. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to further analyze the samples by splitting each particle and examining their crystal structure at Spring 8, a large-scale synchrotron radiation facility in Hyogo Prefecture, starting next month to determine where they are from. The procedure may also provide new information on the birth of the solar system.
“We cannot yet tell (whether the particles are from Itokawa) from their external features, but we have found many particles and there is a chance (that they are extraterrestrial),” said Munetaka Ueno, a researcher at JAXA’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science.
Rocky particles (circled) are seen on the tip of a spatula used to scrape materials off of the sample capsule. (Photo courtesy of JAXA).
The particles in a sample capsule released by the Hayabusa asteroid probe on its return to Earth were largely rocky materials, researchers have announced. At a lecture of the Japanese Society for Planetary Sciences in Nagoya on Oct. 8, a team of researchers released electron micrographs of the particles that were retrieved from the capsule, reporting that most of them were rocky.
According to the research team, including experts from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), they have detected at least 100 particles from the capsule, with most of them measuring less than 0.001 millimeters in size.
Since the rocky particles are diverse in composition, researchers will further inspect them at SPring-8, a large synchrotron radiation facility in Sayo, Hyogo Prefecture, to determine if they are terrestrial or from the asteroid Itokawa.
The k2p blog 