Publication Date:
2006-06-03
Description:
After global observations of asteroid 25143 Itokawa by the Hayabusa spacecraft, we selected the smooth terrain of the Muses Sea for two touchdowns carried out on 19 and 25 November 2005 UTC for the first asteroid sample collection with an impact sampling mechanism. Here, we report initial findings about geological features, surface condition, regolith grain size, compositional variation, and constraints on the physical properties of this site by using both scientific and housekeeping data during the descent sequence of the first touchdown. Close-up images revealed the first touchdown site as a regolith field densely filled with size-sorted, millimeter- to centimeter-sized grains.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Yano, Hajime -- Kubota, T -- Miyamoto, H -- Okada, T -- Scheeres, D -- Takagi, Y -- Yoshida, K -- Abe, M -- Abe, S -- Barnouin-Jha, O -- Fujiwara, A -- Hasegawa, S -- Hashimoto, T -- Ishiguro, M -- Kato, M -- Kawaguchi, J -- Mukai, T -- Saito, J -- Sasaki, S -- Yoshikawa, M -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2006 Jun 2;312(5778):1350-3.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Planetary Science, Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, 3-1-1 Yoshinodai, Sagamihara, Kanagawa 229-8510 Japan. yano@isas.jaxa.jp〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16741113" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
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Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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