Sun, May 11, 2003
Historical Scientific Mission
So far, man has obtained pieces of other bodies in space by
going to the moon or investigating meteor strikes. That's all
changed as of now. Japan has sent a ship into space on the hunt for
asteroids. When it finds 'em, it'll bring 'em back.
The Muses-C probe was launched aboard an M-5 rocket Friday from
the Kagoshima Space Center in the southern Japanese town of
Uchinoura. It was the third space launch by ISAS, Japan's space
agency, in the past six weeks. The first two were spy
satellites.
"Asteroids are known as the fossils of the solar system,' said
mission leader Junichiro Kawaguchi of Japan's Institute of Space
and Astronautical Science. "By examining them, you can find out
what substances made up the solar system, including Earth, in the
distant past."
Here's The Plan...
In the next four-and-a-half years, Muses-C will rendesvous with
an asteroid known as 1998 SF36, a football-shaped rock in space
about 186 million miles away. After spending about three months
orbiting and examining the asteroid, the probe will actually land
on its surface, fire a rocket-propelled projectile into it, collect
the pieces and come home. Upon achieving earth orbit, the Muses-C
probe will eject its sample box. The samples will - hopefully -
parachute safely into the Australian Outback.
Well, that's the plan, anyway. "Bringing back a sample is an
extremely difficult proposition," Kawaguchi admitted.
The $160 million Japanese mission follows by four years a
similar NASA attempt to collect, for want of a better word,
"stardust" by flying through the tail of a comet. It's already
collected one sample and is scheduled to collect another before
returning to Earth in 2006.
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