A miniature robot released by a Japanese space probe to a small asteroid circling the Sun was lost before it was able to land on the asteroid's surface, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) reported on Sunday.
Minerva, a 10 cm (3.9 inch) long can-shaped "baby" robot, had been designed to gather information on the Itokawa asteroid as part of a rehearsal ahead of the unmanned Hayabusa probe's own landing on the asteroid Itokawa scheduled for November 19.
Minerva's landing was to have been the first attempt by Japan to send information-gathering equipment to an astronomic object outside the Earth.
Equipped with a camera and thermometers, Minerva was meant to hop around Itokawa and send data such as surface temperatures and images back to Earth via Hayabusa, the Kyodo news agency reported.
A previous attempt to land Minerva earlier this month was aborted due to technical problems.
Itokawa, a 600 metre (1,970 feet)-long asteroid that travels on an orbit that takes it between earth and Mars, is named after Hideo Itokawa, the father of Japan's space exploration programme. It is currently around 290 million km (180 million miles) away from the Earth.
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