Japanese spacecraft nears asteroid

Rivals from the United States and Europe get the bigger headlines and bigger budgets, but a little-noticed Japanese mission to a distant space rock may scoop them all.

Launched to the world's near-total indifference on May 9 2003, the little probe Hayabusa ("Falcon") is now on the brink of rendezvousing with a 630-metre (yard) asteroid on a mission that could prove historic.

If all goes well, Hayabusa will be the first spacecraft to bring home raw material from an asteroid, part of the primeval rubble left over from the making of the Solar System.

"It is an utterly remarkable project which has been given almost little coverage in the media," Patrick Michel, a French astrophysicist who is involved in the mission, told AFP on Monday at a meeting of astronomers here.

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All goes well, the first sample return from an asteroid will be from the Japanese.

There's an interesting SFnal setting. Mars is American and the asteroid belt is Japanese...I've almost always seen the Belt as being an American setting.