Spunky Hayabusa Heads Home With Possible Payload

摘要

In a voyage fast becoming the stuff of spacefaring legend, Japan's Hayabusa asteroid mission, once thought lost, is coming home. Launched in 2003, the spacecraft has endured one mishap after another in the course of traveling more than 4 billion kilometers to retrieve samples from the asteroid Itokawa. "Spacecraft aren't supposed to survive such a stringrnof difficulties," says Erik Asphaug, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.rnIf nothing else goes wrong, Hayabusa will be the first spacecraft to return to Earth after landing and lifting off a celestial body other than the moon.