Originally posted by spacedoubt
reply to post by ChaosMagician
It was beautiful because it came back as planned.
The Japanese did a pretty good job sending this to an asteroid, picking up a sample.
The craft returned, dropped the sample. the sample survived reentry, the craft did not.
that was all by design.
The sample however was very small. I think they might be a little disappointed about that.
Originally posted by ChaosMagician
It's supposed to be the disintegration of the craft. If it is genuine, I can hardly say it's beautiful unless there was no one on it.
The reentry capsule and the spacecraft reentered to the Earth atmosphere on 13 June 2010 at 13:51 UTC.[71] The heat-shielded capsule made a parachute landing in the South Australian outback while the spacecraft broke up and incinerated in a large fireball.