[meteorite-list] Spacecraft's Mission: To Land On Asteroid (MUSES-C)

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:10:07 2004
Message-ID: <200304112111.OAA26073_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.asahi.com/english/national/K2003041100222.html

Spacecraft's mission: to land on asteroid
The Asahi Shimbun (Japan)
April 11, 2003

Japan will launch an unmanned spacecraft May 9 to collect asteroid material
for the first time ever, while carrying the hopes of 870,000 people around
the world.

The asteroid-probing spacecraft, called Muses-C, is operated by the Institute
of Space and Astronautical Science, part of the Ministry of Education, Culture,
Sports, Science and Technology.

The ministry's Space Development Committee approved the May launching on
March 26.

The last time a Japanese spacecraft or satellite was launched for space
exploration purposes was in February 2000. That project ended in failure. The
M5 rocket could not put the satellite into orbit.

Science officials hope the Muses-C spacecraft will erase the memories of that
failure.

The Muses-C will also contain names of ordinary people seeking to be a part of
space history.

The spacecraft will carry a ball with a diameter of 10 centimeters. The names
of about 870,000 people from 149 countries are inscribed inside the ball. The
names, collected on the Internet, include 313,455 Japanese, 485,543 Americans,
3,499 Britons and several Iraqis, the officials said.

According to the officials, the Muses-C will be launched aboard an M5 rocket from
the Kagoshima Space Center in the town of Uchinoura, Kagoshima Prefecture. It
will land on an asteroid named 1998 SF36 about 300 million kilometers from Earth
in the summer of 2005.

The spaceship will crush rocks on the surface of the asteroid, whose diameter is
about 500 meters, and gather the pieces. It will return to Earth in the summer
of 2007, the officials said.

Immediately before the Muses-C touches down on the asteroid, it will drop the
ball on the surface to mark a landing spot, they said.
Received on Fri 11 Apr 2003 05:11:27 PM PDT