The first attempt at a spectacular landing of a space probe on the Itokawa comet has failed. After analyzing the data received from the probe, Japan's Jaxa space agency announced that its research satellite Hayabusa aborted its approach to the comet some 17 meters from the surface for reasons that are still unclear.

And that's not the first problem the probe had: at the beginning of the week, the agency announced that its had lost contact to one of the robots that was to explore the comet's surface.

Launched in 2003, the satellite was to take material samples and bring them back to Earth in 2007. As the comet's gravity is only one hundred-thousandth of the Earth's, Hayabusa was only designed to briefly touch the comet, shoot a steel ball into it, and collect the dust thus created with a vacuum tube.