Nov 26 2005
From The Space Library
JAXA's Hayabusa spacecraft successfully landed on the asteroid Itokawa, marking the first landing of a Japanese spacecraft on an extraterrestrial body. JAXA had created the spacecraft to collect samples from the asteroid~named after Japanese space scientist Hideo Itokawa. Scientists had theorized that asteroids are composed of material that has remained unchanged since the solar system's formation, and they hoped that analyzing the composition of that material could provide information about the origins of celestial bodies. JAXA planned for a capsule with samples from Itokawa to launch from the asteroid within a few days and to land in the Australian outback in June 2007. (George Nishiyama for Reuters, “Update 1-Japan Probe Lands and Collects Samples on Asteroid,” 26 November 2005.)
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