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This Is the Fiery Ending to a Seven Year Asteroid Mission: Video

Last night, the Japanese asteroid explorer Hayabusa ( "peregrine falcon" in Japanese) returned to Earth in a fiery light show, 7 years after it was launched. A modified DC-8 jetliner videotaped the dramatic re-entry of the probe as it slammed into the...

Last night, the Japanese asteroid explorer Hayabusa ( “peregrine falcon” in Japanese) returned to Earth in a fiery light show, 7 years after it was launched. A modified DC-8 jetliner videotaped the dramatic re-entry of the probe as it slammed into the atmosphere, and helped scientists track the return capsule, which parachuted to safety on the Australian outback with meteor booty aboard.

It’s amazing the craft made it back at all: Hayabusa suffered a series of near-disasters, from the most powerful solar flare ever recorded to an overheating which sent the machine into “safe mode,” and a failure to collect as many samples as desired from the asteroid, Itokawa.

Whether Hayabusa retrieved samples or not (it could take months before scientists make an announcement), its photos contained some valuable lessons about the 500-meter wide asteroid, including that it was formed of smaller pieces of rock held together by a mutual gravity. In the event that an asteroid ends up on a collision course with Earth – as Apophis could do – we need to know more about them so that we can destroy them and save ourselves. Like astroids, science rocks.

via

Discovery