Asteroid Probe's Return to Earth Keeps Scientists on Edge

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A "welcome home" team of eager scientists is anxiously awaiting this month's return of a Japanese asteroid probe and its planned nosedive into Australia because — just maybe — it is toting a tiny, but prized, piece of space rock.

If all goes well, the sample return capsule of Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft will parachute down on June 13 over a sparsely populated land within Woomera Test Range in South Australia.

Blazing through the sky, the capsule's re-entry would be both a triumph of stick-to-it-ness and a tribute to scientific curiosity.

That's the view of Peter Jenniskens, the principal investigator of the NASA-sponsored Hayabusa Re-Entry Airborne Observing Campaign from the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif.

Jenniskens detailed the nail-biting role of airborne sky watchers at Meteoroids 2010 — an international conference on minor bodies in the solar system held here May 24-28.
 
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