Spacecraft on track to land in outback (manmade)

[bluestflame]

Scientists say tonight's world-first space landing in South Australia's outback should create a spectacular fireball.

Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa is due to re-enter the earth's atmosphere around midnight (AEST).

It will end a seven-year, five billion-kilometre journey to an ancient far-flung asteroid to collect the first ever asteroid material to be brought to Earth, and it will be Australia's first ever space landing.

The car-sized probe became the world's first spacecraft to land on and lift off a celestial body other than the moon after touching down on Itokawa, a "rubble-pile" asteroid 300 million kilometres distant, in September 2005.

Hayabusa's on-board devices showed Itokawa was between "several tens of millions and hundreds of millions" years old, and had broken away from an ancient celestial body formed in the Solar System's most primitive stages.

Lindsay Campbell from the Woomera Test Range says safety precautions will include closing airspace, a section of the Stuart Highway and halting the Ghan Railway.

"We're told by NASA that this should be quite a solid fireball as the spacecraft re-enters," he said.

to read more

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...13/2925877.htm

I'm going out to watch in around 2 hours http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...13/2925877.htm

[bluestflame]

would be interesting if this was a cover story