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REAL LIFE NEWS: PROBE ASTEROID PARTICLES CONFIRMED

by Hazed

Back in 2005, the Japanese space probe Hayabusa spent three weeks in orbit around an asteroid, Itokawa. It's mission was not just to observe, but to capture some dust from the surface of the rock and bring it back to Earth.

The mission was beset with problems: Hayabusa was hit by a solar flare and experienced propulsion glitches, and the capture tool did not work as planned. But the sample capsule made it safely back to Earth in June this year, landing in the Australian desert. Since then, scientists at the Japanese space agency's Sagamihara Campus in Kanagawa have subjected the miniscule grains found within the canister to detailed examination.

And now they have announced the exciting news: the particles do come from the asteroid. "Almost all of them are extraterrestrial and come from Itokawa," the agency said in its statement. This is the first time samples from an asteroid have been returned to Earth.

So despite the malfunctioning capture device, Hayabusa must have managed to disturb the surface of the asteroid enough to kick up dust into the capture tool.

The mission's project manager, Junichiro Kawaguchi, said, "I don't know how to describe what has been beyond our dreams, but I'm overwhelmed by emotion."

So just what do the particles consist of? They contain the minerals olivine, pyroxene and plagioclase. All three are common on Earth, but their atomic composition and relative abundances are different in the asteroid particles - and the analysis fits with what Hayabusa saw with its remote-sensing instruments when it was orbiting Itokawa.

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