Topic: Australian Outback

JAXA Team Starts to Pry Open Hayabusa Asteroid-Sample Capsule, Finds Whiff of Gas

Popular Science - 595 days ago
The Hayabusa spacecraft landed in the Australian outback on June 13, after a seven-year space journey. It is the hope of JAXA, Japan's space agency, that the capsule Hayabusa is carrying contains a sample taken from asteroid Itokawa. Now, the process of ...

Japanese asteroid probe set to return to Earth

New Scientist - 1771 days ago
Japan's problem-plagued Hayabusa spacecraft will attempt to return to Earth in the next several weeks, mission controllers say. The start of the return trip was then postponed from December 2005 to March 2007.. Now, mission controllers say they have postponed the start ...