Asteroid-Catcher Blasts Into Space | Aero-News Network
Aero-News Network
RSS icon RSS feed
podcast icon MP3 podcast
Subscribe Aero-News e-mail Newsletter Subscribe

Airborne Unlimited -- Most Recent Daily Episodes

Episode Date

Airborne-Monday

Airborne-Tuesday

Airborne-Wednesday Airborne-Thursday

Airborne-Friday

Airborne On YouTube

Airborne-Unlimited-07.07.25

Airborne-NextGen-07.08.25

AirborneUnlimited-06.25.25

Airborne-AffordableFlyers-06.26.25

AirborneUnlimited-06.27.25

Sun, May 11, 2003

Asteroid-Catcher Blasts Into Space

Historical Scientific Mission

So far, man has obtained pieces of other bodies in space by going to the moon or investigating meteor strikes. That's all changed as of now. Japan has sent a ship into space on the hunt for asteroids. When it finds 'em, it'll bring 'em back.

The Muses-C probe was launched aboard an M-5 rocket Friday from the Kagoshima Space Center in the southern Japanese town of Uchinoura. It was the third space launch by ISAS, Japan's space agency, in the past six weeks. The first two were spy satellites.

"Asteroids are known as the fossils of the solar system,' said mission leader Junichiro Kawaguchi of Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science. "By examining them, you can find out what substances made up the solar system, including Earth, in the distant past."

Here's The Plan...

In the next four-and-a-half years, Muses-C will rendesvous with an asteroid known as 1998 SF36, a football-shaped rock in space about 186 million miles away. After spending about three months orbiting and examining the asteroid, the probe will actually land on its surface, fire a rocket-propelled projectile into it, collect the pieces and come home. Upon achieving earth orbit, the Muses-C probe will eject its sample box. The samples will - hopefully - parachute safely into the Australian Outback.

Well, that's the plan, anyway. "Bringing back a sample is an extremely difficult proposition," Kawaguchi admitted.

The $160 million Japanese mission follows by four years a similar NASA attempt to collect, for want of a better word, "stardust" by flying through the tail of a comet. It's already collected one sample and is scheduled to collect another before returning to Earth in 2006.

FMI: www.isas.ac.jp , http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov

Advertisement

More News

NTSB Prelim: Piper PA-23

Pilot Also Reported That Due To A Fuel Leak, The Auxiliary Fuel Tanks Were Not Used On June 4, 2025, at 13:41 eastern daylight time, a Piper PA-23, N2109P, was substantially damage>[...]

Classic Aero-TV: One Man’s Vietnam

From 2023 (YouTube Edition): Reflections on War’s Collective Lessons and Cyclical Nature The exigencies of war ought be colorblind. Inane social-constructs the likes of racis>[...]

NTSB Final Report: Capella Aircraft Corp FW1C50

Pilot Reported That He Was Unfamiliar With The Single Seat Amateur-Built Airplane And His Intent Was To Perform High-Speed Taxi Testing Analysis: The pilot reported that he was unf>[...]

Classic Aero-TV: Timber Tiger Touts Curtiss Jenny Replicas

From 2023 (YouTube Edition): First Kits to Ship October 2023 Having formerly resurrected the storied shape of the Ryan ST—in effigy, anyway—Montrose, Colorado-based Tim>[...]

ANN's Daily Aero-Term (07.04.25): Performance-Based Navigation (PBN) [ICAO]

Performance-Based Navigation (PBN) [ICAO] Area navigation based on performance requirements for aircraft operating along an ATS route, on an instrument approach procedure or in a d>[...]

blog comments powered by Disqus



Advertisement

Advertisement

Podcasts

Advertisement

© 2007 - 2025 Web Development & Design by Pauli Systems, LC