The Results of Asteroid Exploration Mission Hayabusa Outline of the Operation for 7 Years -

摘要

The asteroid explorer Hayabusa, which is the spacecraft for asteroid sample return mission of Japan, came back to the Earth on June 13, 2010, seven year after the launch. It is the first spacecraft in the world that went to a solar system body farther than the moon, touched down on its surface, took off, and came back to the earth. Hayabusa has many new challenges; some of them were successful but others were unsuccessful. As the results, Hayabusa revealed the strange nature of a small near earth asteroid, Itokawa. In this paper, we describe the whole mission of Hayabusa.