Hayabusa's reentry and recovery of its capsule

Abstract

The Asteroid Explorer Hayabusa was launched by M-V rocket from Uchinoura Space Center, JAXA on May 9, 2003. Conquering several troubles during totally 7 years of orbital flight, it returned to the vicinity of the earth and completed the powered-flight by the ion thruster in the begging of 2010. After successive trajectory correction maneuvers for the reentry ,the mother spacecraft successfully released a small capsule with asteroid sample. The capsule has entered the earth atmosphere in the desert of the Australia on June 13, 2010, and successfully have been recovered by June 15. The present paper overviews the return operation of the Hayabusa mother spacecraft and reentry flight and recovery operation of the sample return capsule. Show more