Small Bodies Mission Support

Hayabusa is a joint asteroid sample return mission between the the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science of Japan (ISAS) and NASA. The spacecraft was launched from Kagoshima Space Center, Japan on 9 May 2003 and is scheduled to swing past Earth in June 2004 and arrived at the asteroid (25143) Itokawa in September 2005. The official name is now "Hayabusa", which means "falcon". The spacecraft was launched as "Muses-C".

Hayabusa will study (25143) Itokawa from an altitude of approximately 20 km. It will make several close approaches to the surface of the asteroid, and during at least two of these close approaches Hayabusa will collect surface samples. After about three months at the asteroid Hayabusa will begin its return to Earth in December 2005. The re-entry capsule with the asteroid samples will detach from the spacecraft as it gets closer to the Earth, and it will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere in June 2010.

Discussions are underway among the SBN, the scientists at ISAS, and the US members of the science team regarding a PDS-compatible archive of all data from the mission.

The Hayabusa Mission web site is maintained by ISAS.

The SBN is the PDS node for PDS archiving of the Muses-C mission data.

Instrument/Investigation	Measuring	Small Bodies Data available below
Optical Navigation Camera/Telescope (ONC-T)	Imaging	none
LIght Detection And Ranging (LIDAR)	Topography	none
Near-Infrared Spectrometer	Mineralogy	none
X-ray Spectrometer	Chemical composition	none

Instrument/Investigation	Measuring	Small Bodies Data available below
Camera	Imaging	none
Infrared Spectrometer	Mineralogy	none
alpha/X-ray Spectrometer	Chemical composition of the surface	none

Instrument/ Investigation Description	Target	Description of Available Data	Data Link
No data available yet

Target	Target Type	Other Data Sets Targeting this Object
25143 Itokawa (a.k.a. 1998 SF36)	Asteroid