A Japanese space probe released a small robot Saturday toward an asteroid orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars as part of a rehearsal for its own planned descent later this month, but the robot probably missed the target, the space agency said.
The probe, named Hayabusa, released the Minerva robot toward the asteroid Itokawa, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.
But JAXA announced later Saturday that the robot probably failed to land on the asteroid and was lost because Hayabusa released the robot slightly off course.
A practice run Nov. 4 was aborted before Minerva was deployed due to technical problems.
The potato-shaped asteroid, measuring 548 meters by 312 meters by 276 meters, is about 320 million km away Earth.
Minerva, weighing less than 600 grams and equipped with three small cameras, was expected to hop around the asteroid and send such data as surface temperatures and images back to Earth via Hayabusa, the agency said.
Hayabusa, launched in May 2003 to travel to Itokawa to collect surface samples, is scheduled to touch down on the asteroid on Nov. 19 and 25 to take rock samples before heading back to Earth. It is scheduled to arrive in June 2007.
The space agency expects the mission to answer questions about the birth of the solar system.
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