Hayabusa was a mission prepared, operated and successfully accomplished by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). JAXA built a spacecraft that is about two and half times the size of an adult human. This marvelous instrument completed a 1 billion mile journey to obit and land on a tiny asteroid, named Itokawa. Itokawa’s maximum size is 1755 ft. This is equivalent to “shooting” at the Sun as if it were 28 million times further away than it is now.

Hopefully, Hayabusa successfully collected samples from the Itokawa’s surface. It left the surface and returned to Earth. On Sunday, June 13, 2010, a container 15-inches in diameter landed by parachute in Australia’s Woomera Prohibited Area (WPA). JAXA representatives recovered the container, returned it to Japan and will examine it to determine if Itokawa samples were collected and, if so, study the samples.

Excellent descriptions of the mission are at the websites Hayabusa Returns From Its Long Voyage to Asteroid. This website provides references to very good websites giving a summary of the mission, excellent summary, and a visual summary.

According to the website, Japanese Hayabusa returns from asteroid mission, Hayabusa is the first round trip to a planetary body beyond the Moon and, if it returned samples of Itokawa, the fourth to return samples from an object beyond the Earth.

To understand the wonderment and amazement of this marvelous achievement, consider the image on the website, Quite close – quite a distance. The first impression is a black page. But looking closely, at the center is a white dot. As noted in the upper left-hand corner, this is the Earth 3.6 million km (2.2 million mi) as it appeared from Hayabusa after the Trajectory Correction Maneuver – Three (TCM-3). The goal is for Hayabusa to encounter that white dot, which is 8,000 miles in diameter. Not only to encounter that globe, but also to find a small area about 200 miles square and parachute a 15-inch diameter container into it! It is a fantastic feat!!

It is a marvelous achievement that we understand so much about world about us that we can do this. We understand the laws of motion (mechanics); have measured key parameters, such as the mass of the Earth, Moon, Sun and other planets; know the size and shape of the orbits of these objects; understand and can build spacecraft propulsion systems as well as guidance and control systems; can communicate with spacecraft and transfer data over the vast distances of space.

These are only a small example of the accomplishments that have contributed to Hayabusa’s success. They come from a wide range of human endeavors that have been developed over tens to hundreds of years, for example, science, engineering, management, accounting and finance, mathematics and statistics, computer science - all amazing, all based on the contributions of many people, all necessary.