Analysis of Hayabusa's Returned Samples Progress

Officials with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) say that work is progressing smoothly in analyzing the ultra-small particles that the Hayabusa sample-return mission brought back to Earth.

The mission investigated asteroid 25143 Itokawa, which was discovered back in 1998 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project. It was the first space rock to be visited by a sample-return mission.

Hayabusa launched on May 9, 2003, and spent more than 7 years in space total. It was scheduled to return a lot faster than that, but most of its components suffered some type of failure before it could parachute its sample container down to Earth.

This finally happened on June 13, 2010, in the South Australian Outback, next to the Woomera Test Range. The reentry capsule was immediately retrieved, and then stored for analysis.

The sealed chamber was taken to the JAXA Sagamihara campus, at the Planetary Material Sample Curation Facility, where it was finally opened, and its cargo revealed. Numerous minute particles were discovered within, which gave scientists hope that the entire effort had not been for nothing.

During a meeting at the 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, held last week in The Woodlands, Texas, more than 1,800 scientists around the world heard the latest discoveries related of the Japanese team.

Tests conducted on the samples since January have been largely aimed at determining the origins of the asteroid, and at learning more details of its evolution in the early solar system. The announcements were made by Osaka University Department of Earth and Space Science expert Akira Tsuchiyama.

“More than 1,500 particles were successfully recovered … so we have to obtain as much information as possible from a small amount of sample,” the expert revealed. At this point, his team is peering over the particles grain by grain, Space reports.

The expert added that a lot more particles were in fact uncovered in the Hayabusa sample chamber, but explained that they were literally too small to handle. Even the ones that the team did manage to get out are smaller than 100 microns.

As the team is focused on analyzing these traces of cosmic material, experts at the JAXA Space Exploration Center are working on developing Hayabusa 2, which will be launched in 2014 towards an asteroid called 162173 1999 JU3.

According to SEC expert Hajime Yano, the team has learned a lot from the way the first Hayabusa handled itself in space. As such, the new spacecraft won't be just a copy of the former, but rather a new and improved version.