{"id":683,"date":"2010-06-17T21:35:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-18T02:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/?p=683"},"modified":"2010-06-17T21:41:10","modified_gmt":"2010-06-18T02:41:10","slug":"japanese-spacecraft-breaks-up-returning-from-a-billion-mile-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.encoretechresources.com\/insights\/2010\/06\/17\/japanese-spacecraft-breaks-up-returning-from-a-billion-mile-trip\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese Spacecraft Breaks Up Returning From a Billion-Mile Trip"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NASA guys keep broadcasting neat things. You hardly ever know when, or who’s listening. But here’s a NASA team video of a Japanese unmanned spacecraft, the Hayabusa, reentering earth’s orbit and breaking up into flaming pieces that the NASA guys think are “beautiful.” Fascinating, yes, but “beautiful” doesn’t seem quite the word for something that’s being destroyed after a trip of 1.25 billion<\/em> miles.<\/p>\n

The video has become a viral hit on YouTube, with well over 200,000 viewers. It was made from a NASA DC-9 airborne laboratory.<\/p>\n

The Hayabusa was launched in May, 2003, Mashable advises, \u00a0to reach the Itokawa comet, “in order to gather samples from the comet and study the astral body\u2019s characteristics, including its topography, trajectory, speed and composition. The spacecraft reached the comet in September 2005.”<\/p>\n

When it reached the earth’s atmosphere on its return trip recently, the Hayabusa started breaking up into hundreds of flaming pieces. It was as though it was leaving a punch-tape record across the heavens, and then the tape “caught fire” and disintegrated.<\/p>\n

This writer has to refresh himself on why it’s necessary to loose returning unmanned space vehicles like this one. But for now, it’s enough to know that the scientists only needed the canister the Hayabusa had with the samples it collected and\u00a0they’ve retrieved that from its landing place in South Australia.<\/p>\n

So have a look at what’s caused all the excitement at NASA and on YouTube. \u2013 \u00a0Doug Bedell <\/em><\/p>\n

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The NASA guys keep broadcasting neat things. You hardly ever know when, or who’s listening. But here’s a NASA team video of a Japanese unmanned spacecraft, the Hayabusa, reentering earth’s orbit and breaking up into flaming pieces that the NASA guys think are “beautiful.” Fascinating, yes, but “beautiful” doesn’t seem quite the word for something […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t