JAXA Gets Approval for Hayabusa 2

All space agencies in the world managed to conduct only 5 or 6 successful sample-return missions since 1969. RosCosmos was the most active, sending 7 spacecraft, and succeeding with 3. But the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) sent only one, and succeeded.

Following the success of the first Hayabusa mission, which landed in Australia in 2010 after exploring the asteroid Itokawa, officials with the Japanese government decided to authorize a new Hayabusa mission. The first mission was plagued by errors, but engineers eventually patched it up until it reached home.

JAXA wants to replicate the same achievement with Hayabusa 2, a spacecraft scheduled to launch in 2014, rendezvous with asteroids 1993 JU3 in 2018, and return its sample canister to Earth in 2020.

The most interesting thing about the second iteration of the Hayabusa mission is that engineers now know of the errors that plagued the first spacecraft, and are determined to avoid them, Universe Today reports.