Japanese space probe Hayabusa makes history

I was just watching a Japanese Internet broadcast of the space probe Hayabusa's return to Earth. Hayabusa was launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in September 2003 to probe a tiny asteroid called 25143 Itokawa in the Apollo near-Earth asteroid group. It was designed to take samples of the asteroid and return them to Earth. Apparently, this is the first time an unmanned space probe has returned to Earth from an asteroid.

Here is a rebroadcast of the re-entry, in Japanese. It is a pretty memory-intensive web site so you will need a good computer and Internet connection to access it.

The most visible part is after 3:00 or so.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7634995