Japanese probe pulls within 12 miles of asteroid

TOKYO -- Bringing Japan's most complex space mission near its climax, a probe is within 12 miles of an asteroid almost 180 million miles from Earth in an unprecedented rendezvous designed to retrieve rocks from its surface.\nThe Hayabusa probe, launched in May 2003, will hover around the asteroid for about three months before making its brief landing to recover the samples in early November. The asteroid is located between Earth and Mars.\nThe probe's first mission will be to survey the asteroid with cameras and infrared imaging gear. It has already begun sending back images, said Atsushi Wako, a spokesman for JAXA, Japan's space agency.\nWhen Hayabusa moves in for the rendezvous, expected to be over in a matter of seconds, it will pull up close enough to fire a small bullet into the asteroid and collect the ejected fragments in a funnel-like device. It won't be coming back with much -- the amount of material planners hope to capture wouldn't even fill a teaspoon.\nJAXA officials say Hayabusa would be the world's first two-way trip to an asteroid. A NASA probe collected data for two weeks from the surface of the Manhattan-sized asteroid Eros in 2001, but it did not return with physical samples.