MILLEDGEVILLE — Talk about drama in space! We’ve looked at the Japanese Hayabusa spacecraft several times over the past few years. To recap: Hayabusa was launched seven years ago with the goal of visiting a small asteroid called Itokawa, 200 million miles from Earth. To get there and back it had to travel 3.7 billion miles total — nothing in space travel is ever easy and direct, and as we have seen in the past with many other missions, the shortest path is hardly ever the most economical.

Spacecraft like Hayabusa can take their time to get to where they need to go — machines have no sense of time and they never get bored. So it’s far more practical to take the scenic route if it saves fuel, because this in return will make the launch vehicle lighter and cheaper.

What’s different about Hayabusa compared to many other deep space explorers is that it was always meant to come back to Earth in a so-called sample return mission. Hayabusa was to land on Itokawa and collect a sample of the asteroid, then make its way home to deliver the goods.

Hayabusa was plagued by a string of failures, and many gave up hope along the way, but somehow the engineers kept pulling it away from the brink of death, making do with what was working on the craft and still managing to complete the mission — a true testament to human ingenuity and tenacity. The craft was damaged by a solar flare, altimeter reading around the asteroid went haywire, the quick touchdown to collect the sample turned into an actual 30 minute landing and the sample collection mechanism did not work. Scientists hope that some dust and debris ended up in the collection chamber anyway, which was duly sealed and the spacecraft lifted off again.

A tiny probe carried on board Hayabusa did not deploy either, further frustrating mission managers.

On top of it all, Hayabusa had problems with its communications systems and rocket engines, and at times nobody knew where the spacecraft was and what it was doing. Engineers continued to come up with all sorts of alternate methods to steer the craft back on a path toward Earth. Luckily, the five-year trip allowed for many small gradual changes, and Hayabusa kept defying the odds.

Final course corrections were successful beyond all expectations, and Hayabusa entered the Earth’s atmosphere June 13 where it duly disintegrated and burned up in a spectacular light show, but not before it released the sample return capsule. The precious container was equipped with a heat shield and parachute and made it just fine. It landed in the Australian Outback near Woomera and was retrieved by special teams from the Japanese space agency JAXA shortly thereafter. The capsule appeared to be in perfect condition, and they even found the remains of the heat shield.

Special procedures to curtail potential contamination were in effect and the capsule is now bound for a super clean room at JAXA’s Sagamihara facility in Japan.

It will take weeks to prepare the capsule for opening and even longer to determine the absence of contamination and presence of asteroid material. Keep your eyes peeled for news about Hayabusa. If nothing else, it was an incredible trip, and we have a new member in the “Little Spacecraft that could” club.

Check out the Hayabusa website at http://www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/muses_c/index_e.html

Beate Czogalla is the associate professor of theater design in the Department of Music and Theater at Georgia College & State University. She has had a lifelong interest in space exploration and has been a solar system ambassador for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/ NASA for many years. She can be reached at our_space2@yahoo.com