Even as spacecraft go, it has been very unfortunate. It failed at the dress-rehearsal for landing on an asteroid. It lost a robot after safely ferrying it a billion kilometres. And now, Japan鈥檚 Hayabusa seems to have mucked up Sunday鈥檚 plannned touchdown on Itokawa.
The spacecraft got to within 17 metres of the asteroid and then lost contact with Earth. By the time the link was re-established several hours later, the probe had drifted away from its target. It is unclear whether it ever actually landed.
However, mission controllers believe the spacecraft did manage to mark the landing spot by dropping a 鈥渢arget marker鈥� onto Itokawa from an altitude of about 40 metres. They hope to determine what happened when the probe鈥檚 high-gain antenna is turned towards Earth in the next few days. This will enable Hayabusa to transmit more information about its descent to the asteroid.
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鈥淢ost likely, Hayabusa didn鈥檛 reach the surface,鈥� mission project manager Junichiro Kawaguchi told a press conference on Sunday. Kawaguchi wants the spacecraft to try landing again on Friday. 鈥淭here is one more target maker left, so I鈥檇 like to try one more time.鈥� If Hayabusa succeeds in collecting samples from the asteroid and returning to Earth, it will be the first probe to do so.
