The attempt to bring back the first ever rock samples from an asteroid has failed severely. And the Japanese space probe will likely stay in space for three years longer than planned, Japan’s space agency informed. The probe apparently succeeded in landing twice on the asteroid Itokawa nearly 300 million km (186 million miles) from Earth last month. Named Hayabusa, means “falcon” in Japanese disappointed the Japanese scientists at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) who were initially jubilant with the mission.
But, it was JAXA that informed last week, after examining data from the unmanned probe that it had likely failed to collect samples. The landing failure of the probe delayed the plan for Hayabusa to approach Earth in June 2007, and drop a capsule containing the samples into the Australian outback. JAXA informed on its Web site that the return has been put back until June 2010.
Via: Reuters
