Tokyo, May 10: A Japanese spacecraft blasted off Friday on an ambitious four-and-a-half-year journey to bring asteroid samples back to Earth for the first time.

The mid-size solid-fuel M-5 rocket, carrying an unmanned MUSES-C probe, lifted off from the Kagoshima Space Centre in the southern Japanese town of Uchinoura. The probe was later renamed Hayabusa, or Falcon.

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The M-5, the fifth such rocket to be launched, deployed the probe into its targeted "transfer orbit", setting it off on a huge loop outside Earth's orbit around the sun and towards asteroid 1998SF36.

The project, to achieve the world's first two-way trip to an asteroid, has been developed by the science and education ministry's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS).
The MUSES-C is due to reach the asteroid, 300 million km away from Earth, in two years' time, according to a description of the mission on ISAS' website.


1998SF36 is now between Mars and Jupiter and on an Earth-approaching orbit, having been pulled out of the Kuiper asteroid belt by the gravitational force of Jupiter. It is estimated to measure 500 metres in diameter.

The MUSES-C will spend some five months near the asteroid, making observations of its surface and gathering samples.


It is programmed to make three one-second touch-and-go contacts with the asteroid, during which it will fire small projectiles into its surface to smash part of it and catch the resulting particles in a cone-shaped funnel as they rise up in the low-gravity environment. Before touch-down, the probe will drop a ball-shaped light-emitting target marker onto the asteroid's surface. Bureau Report