Emily LakdawallaNov 17, 2005

Another Hayabusa update: small delay

There has been a delay of just about a day in JAXA's plans for landing Hayabusa on Itokawa. Here is the update that we just received from Tak Iyori of The Planetary Society of Japan:

ISAS re-scheduled Hayabusa's sampling activity as below. Time is JST. At around 9p.m. on Saturday, November 19 [noon UTC], Hayabusa will start descending. At around 3 a.m. on Sunday, November 20 [6 p.m. Nov 19 UTC], ISAS will announce status of Hayabusa. At around 5a.m. [8 p.m. UTC], ISAS will decide on "go or no go." If "go" command is sent from Earth, Hayabusa will make the closest approach to Itokawa at around 6 a.m. [9 p.m. UTC] At 6:30 a.m. [9:30 p.m. UTC], ISAS will announce whether or not the target marker containing approximately 880,000 names was released. At around 10:00 a.m. [1 a.m. Nov 20 UTC], ISAS will annouce whether or not Hayabusa made the contact with Itokawa's surface. Around noon, a press conference will be held for the results.

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