Japan's asteroid probe fails to make landing

The BBC reports that Japan’s Hayabusa (it means Falcon) space probe, an ambitious undertaking intended to bring back samples from an asteroid, failed to make its scheduled landing on the asteroid:

An unmanned Japanese space probe sent to collect what would be the world's first samples from an asteroid has failed to touch down on its target.

The Japanese space agency said the Hayabusa probe had got to within 17 metres (56ft) of the asteroid before they temporarily lost contact with it.

The agency said it hoped to make a second attempt to land the craft.

The mission has had several setbacks - last week a mini-robot due to collect data from the asteroid disappeared.

The probe apparently made its descent as planned then hovered above the asteroid surface without touching down. At the time of this report, JAXA (the Japanese space agency) was unsure whether the failure was caused by a failsafe device or a technical problem.

The mission has had a number of difficulties, including the loss of power in two of three stabilizers and the disappearance of a mini-robot that previously attempted to land and collect data from the asteroid, which is named Itokawa after its discoverer.

A practice descent by the main probe also was aborted.

JAXA intends to make a second attempt to land the craft.

The JAXA image above was captured by the probe, and shows the probe's own shadow on the asteroid surface.

As I have said many times before, all space missions are inherently complicated, tricky and dangerous.