Full Circles

After finishing the J-drama Keizoku 2 SPEC, I wondered if there really would be a movie or not, so I went to ja.wikipedia to check.

In the section under the female lead character, there's a line stating that she uses 死語. Then things just veered from there.

死語→廃語→流行語→新語・流行語大賞→今年の漢字→はやぶさ (in the 2010 entry)

はやぶさ?! Didn't I just hear this term and saw its model in the last episode? Of course I had to check out this はやぶさ.

Hayabusa, code named MUSES-C (Mu Space Engineering Spacecraft C) during development, was named after the bird 隼(falcon) for its swift prey snatching technique, since Hayabusa was designed to collect samples in a "touch and go" manner in the time frame of under 1 second.

Coincidentally, Hayabusa was assigned to collect samples from Itokawa, an Apollo asteroid named after the father of Japanese space development and rocket science, Itokawa Hideo. Itokawa also designed the fighter jet pet named Hayabusa back during WW II. While it's not related to the asteroid explorer being named Hayabusa (the asteroid was only known by its provisional designation 1998 SF36 at that time), it just so happened that the space probe with the same name of the fighter jet Itokawa designed was commissioned to go to an asteroid named after Itokawa. これもひとつのロマンかな？

Hayabusa already completed its mission and returned to earth, bringing back samples confirmed to be from the Itokawa asteroid. Further analysis would need to wait until special handling procedures are developed to avoid contamination, so there's still more to come from Hayabusa's successful journey.

お帰りなさい、はやぶさ！七年間お疲れ様！