SPACE WIRE
Japanese spacecraft off for four-year journey to bring home asteroid samples
TOKYO (AFP) May 09, 2003
A Japanese spacecraft took off for an ambitious four-and-a-half-year journey Friday to bring asteroid samples back to Earth for the first time, an official said.

The mid-size solid-fuel M-5 rocket, carrying an unmanned MUSES-C probe, blasted off from the Kagoshima Space Centre in the southern Japan town of Uchinoura at 1:29 pm (0429 GMT) as scheduled.

The M-5, the fifth such rocket to be launched, is to deploy the probe into its "transfer orbit", which will set it off on a huge loop through the solar system's asteroid belt towards 1998SF36.

The 1998SF36 is in the belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, and is estimated to measure 500 metres (1,650 foot) in length.

If the mission is successful, it be the first time any samples from space have been brought back since the US Apollo project gathered Moon rocks three decades ago.

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.

SPACE.WIRE