A Japanese space probe has blasted off on a pioneering mission to bring the first asteroid samples back to Earth.
Muses-C, built by the Japanese Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), lifted off from the Kagoshima Space Center on the Japanese island of Kyushu aboard an M-5 rocket on Friday.
The spacecraft should rendezvous with asteroid 1998 SF36 in 2005 at a distance of 290 million kilometres from Earth. Found mainly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, asteroids are the building blocks of the inner planets and have remained unchanged since the formation of the Solar System.
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Muses-C will survey its target for three months in 2005 from a distance of 20 kilometres before firing a small projectile into the asteroid鈥檚 surface at three locations to collect samples. A precious few grams of asteroid material will then be sealed and returned back to Earth where they are expected to parachute to the ground in southern Australia in 2007.
Historic significance
Andrew Coates, at University College London鈥檚 Mullard Space Science Laboratory in the UK, believes the mission to be of historic significance. 鈥淪o far, the only extra-terrestrial body we鈥檝e brought samples back from is the Moon,鈥� he told 快猫短视频.
But Coates points out that the mission is not without its risks, especially during re-entry: 鈥淎ctually bringing [the sample] back to Earth is of course fraught with danger.鈥�
If returned safely, however, the mission鈥檚 samples should provide the first detailed picture of asteroid composition. This should shed new light on the conditions under which the solar system鈥檚 inner bodies were formed.
Return trip
Apostolos Christou, an expert in solar system dynamics at Armargh Observatory in Northern Ireland, says it would be possible to perform much more detailed spectroscopic analysis of the samples back on Earth. This should determine their chemical composition with greater accuracy. 鈥淚t鈥檚 fundamentally new science, the first mission of its kind,鈥� he says.
Muses-C was originally expected to launch in December 2002, but take-off was postponed after an M-5 rocket suffered an earlier launch malfunction. The delay meant finding a new target for the Muses-C to go after.
The probe is not the only one chasing a sample of the early solar system. NASA鈥檚 Stardust spacecraft is scheduled take dust samples from the tail of a comet in January 2004 and return them to Earth in January 2006.
Later this year the European Space Agency also hopes to launch its Rosetta spacecraft, which will attempt to attach a probe to the surface of a comet for the first time. And in July 2005, another NASA spacecraft, Deep Impact, will try to blow a hole in a comet in order to study its core.