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By Timothy Noah
Posted Friday, June 2, 2006, at 7:10 PM ET

What if an asteroid were to strike planet Earth? What could we possibly do to prevent it? However many guys we have working on this problem, it can't possibly be enough. According to Richard Posner, NASA dedicates only about $4 million annually to asteroids. Meanwhile, it plans to spend $64 billion for a nostalgia-fueled return trip to the moon, which, last time I checked, was orbiting the planet quite peacably.

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Thank goodness the Japanese have been picking up some of the slack by sending an unmanned space vehicle out to gather information about asteroids of the "earth-approaching type" (an exquisite euphemism for "potentially earth-annihilating type"). In May 2003, Japan launched an unmanned space vehicle called Hayabusa to collect data on a nearby (though apparently nonthreatening) asteroid called Itokawa. Hayabusa managed last November to land itself on Itokawa and tried—we don't yet know how successfully—to collect some samples from its surface. It also took lots and lots of photographs.

After studying these photographs at great length, several teams of scientists have published their findings in the June 2 Science. The June 2 Washington Post carries a news story by its estimable science writer Guy Gugliotta (who, I'm sorry to report, just took an early-retirement buyout) under the headline, "Pictures Give New Image of Asteroid." Here's how it begins:

Spectacular images and data obtained by a Japanese spacecraft show that the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa is almost certainly an unusual "rubble pile" composed of boulders, pebbles, and perhaps sand and dust, probably brought together gently —and mysteriously—after an ancient collision in space, scientists said yesterday.
"The pictures were just phenomenal, and so different from any other asteroids we've flown by," said planetary geophysicist Olivier Barnouin-Jha of the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory

Gugliotta's story goes on to quota a NASA official saying, ""This is the first for-sure rubble-pile asteroid we've ever seen up close," and to refer mouth-wateringly to "Hayabusa's cornucopia of data and astonishing images." But the pictures themselves are nowhere to be seen, presumably because they were published last fall, and therefore aren't "news." Well, excuse me for having a faulty middle-aged memory, but I don't remember seeing them, and even if I did, Guglotta's story would make me want to see them again. It cries out for illustration. Tough luck!

But do not despair. I have gone to the English-language Web site for Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency and procured a few photos, which I share with you below and on the following two pages. Now you can see for yourself, courtesy of JAXA, the pile of pebbles from outer space whose like may one day annihilate the earth. To read the footnotes, roll your mouse over the portions highlighted in yellow. And hey—in the words of Sergeant Phil Esterhaus on Hill Street Blues—let's be careful out there.

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