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Fine Adjustments to "HAYABUSA" toward Earth Swingby

Around 11:00 (AM, JST) of May 12, Deep Space Control Center of ISAS, JAXA, successfully made fine adjustment to asteroid explorer "HAYABUSA" which had been launched May 9, 2003. The adjustment was the preparatory operation toward the Earth swingby scheduled for May 19. At the instant of the propulsive operation at 11:00 of May 12, the distance between HAYABUSA and Earth was 2.5 million km, and the velocity of HAYABUSA was about 4 km/s. ? V was 13.2 cm/s. The final results of the swingby including the closest approach to HAYABUSA will be confirmed in the morning of May 20. The success would be the world-first swingby for spacecraft using an ion engine as a main thruster.

May 13, 2004