A Japanese space probe has landed on the on the surface of the Itokawa asteroid and collected samples from the surface to return to earth.
According to the BBC, the Hayabusa probe briefly touched down on the asteroid, 180 million miles from Earth. The probe fired a small metal ball into the surface and apparently collected the resulting powdery debris. Scientists won't be sure when the sample was collected until the craft returns to Earth in 2007.
Itokawa is only 2,300 feet long and 1,000 feet wide and has a gravitational pull only 1/100,000th that of Earth's.
Saturday's successful landing on the asteroid was Hayabusa's second. Last Sunday the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) lost contact with the probe during that attempt and did not even realize it had landed until days later.
Hayabusa was launched in May 2003 and has until early December before it must leave orbit and begin its journey home. It is expected to return to Earth and land in the Australian outback in June 2007.
Hayabusa is not the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid that accomplishment was achieved by NASA's NEAR spacecraft. But Hayabusa is the first to touch down on an asteroid and return to orbit. Hayabusa even dit it twice.
Simply amazing.
Image courtesy of JAXA.
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