Dec. 29, 2010:? Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Hayabusa probe has home Earth pieces brought from an alien world asteroid Itokawa.
"It's an incredible feeling in the Palm of your hand another world have of your hand, right," says Mike Zolensky, curator of interplanetary dust at the Johnson Space Center and one of the three non-Japanese members of the team science. "We look for the first time from nearby, what actually is an asteroid!"
He has good reason to be excited. Asteroids made us can teach at the dawn of the solar system, so that study these examples how it formed and evolved.
Hayabusa in 2003 in life launched and on a billion kilometre journey to Itokawa, slightly more than two years later get. In 2005 the spacecraft performed a spectacular Feat--surface(1) landed on the asteroid. The hope was to collect samples from the foreign world.
But there was a problem. The projectiles on dust blast from the surface set not raised, so that only the particles kicked up by the landing for collection. Asteroid has dust made it into the collection Chamber?
Zolensky and others eager scientists, with eyes riveted skyward, saw on the night of 13 June 2010 overthrow the answer back in the Earth's atmosphere with 27,000 miles per hour. Hayabusa's main bus station shattered on the Australian outback while the re-entry and the intact sample return capsule to Earth via parachute drove.
"We were fascinated," says Zolensky. "To land as we waited, no one moved also."
But the wait was just only. Because retrieval of the capsule in the darkness was too dangerous, trying a sleepless night he spent before I a closer look.
"I was the helicopter, which flew to the landing site in the next morning one of the first people on board." "And I was the first person to the capsule to walk up."
He had to stop for 10 metres from it. More wait.
"I saw it restore the retrieval team." You were wearing masks and gloves and padded blue suits. You had to turn off, the unexploded parachute release fees, and that was pretty nerve racking. "Then, oh so carefully picked up the capsule and placed it in a box."
The valuable cargo was flown for the analysis of Jet Charter to Japan. Guess who was waiting on you when it arrived?
"I was ready to work," says Zolensky along with other team member Scott Sandford of NASA Ames Research Center for the opening had traveled to Japan.
"The first results were disheartening." "When we checked the capsule with a modified CAT scan, it seemed nothing inside."
Next Japanese team members carefully dismantled the capsule, piece by piece. "They had to use a Micromanipulator, to avoid contamination, and the process took months."
More wait.
"After we could within the capsule, we dust on the inner wall see." "I thought to myself, ' asteroid dust here we have!" "But there was still a possibility the content could be contamination of launch or reentry and landing."
The next step was to remove and analyze the particle-another wait excruciatingly slow process, and more.
"The particles are smaller than the diameter of a human hair." "We used to sweep Teflon spatula from a large number of tiny particles eventually."
Although most of the particles in the capsule, the team has removed and 2000 analyzed by them electron microscope.
And?
"At least 1500 of them from the asteroid are!" We see pieces of another world. It looks like a large very primitive type. "We learn in March at the 2011 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston can."
This is only the third time that extraterrestrial back brought samples of a solid on the Earth. The Apollo astronauts and Soviet Luna robots were first - they brought us samples of Moondust. And NASA's Stardust spacecraft return samples of the Comet Wild 2 in 2006.
"The Japanese are thrilled, and we are." The Emperor requested even a personal guided tour of the capsule. This is her mission of Apollo. "You are all a new world show!"
Author: Dauna Coulter | Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
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