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The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said on Sunday that they believed Hayabusa had failed to land because of a technical glitch, but further analysis of the data has shown the probe landed on the surface and stayed there for around 30 minutes.
As the spacecraft descended to asteroid Itokawa on Saturday, it released a target marker used to guide it to the correct place on the surface. But a technical problem caused Hayabusa to temporarily lose contact with the Earth shortly after. It now appears that the craft landed successfully, although the equipment designed to collect the sample was not deployed.
According to the BBC News website, a mission team member said that whilst the sampling equipment was not deployed, the landing of the craft: "could have disturbed enough surface material for some to have got into its sample collection chamber by accident."
Hayabusa was meant to land on the surface and fire a pellet into the asteroid. It should then have collected some of the ejected material to return to Earth for analysis.
"Apparently, Hayabusa bounced off something on the surface more than once and spent some 39 minutes resting on it, but the samplers didn't fire," science team member Andy Cheng of Johns Hopkins University, USA, told the BBC News website.
"It's possible some asteroidal material has been collected, but the spacecraft has no sensor to confirm that," he added.
JAXA will decide today whether a second touchdown for sampling attempt will go ahead as planned on Friday 25 November.
The Hayabusa mission has had a number of problems, including the loss of the mission's MINERVA robotic lander, and the failure of two of the spacecraft's four stabilising reaction wheels. These reaction wheels are designed to keep the spacecraft properly orientated, and the loss of them has required additional use of the spacecraft's thrusters. The thrusters consume fuel, and it is now unclear how much fuel Hayabusa has left.
The craft is designed to leave Itokawa in the first week of December, to return the samples to Earth. If the mission is successful it will be the first asteroid sample return mission.
More info: JAXA;BBC News
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