AU. On 31 July, the X-axis reaction wheel failed. On 14 August, Hayabusa's first image of Itokawa was released. The picture was taken by the star tracker and shows a point of light, believed to be the asteroid, moving across the starfield. Other images were taken from 22 to 24 August. On 28 August, Hayabusa was switched over from the ion engines to the bi-propellant thrusters for orbital maneuvering. From 4 September, Hayabusa's cameras were able to confirm Itokawa's elongated shape. From 11 September, individual hills were discerned on the asteroid. On 12 September, Hayabusa was from Itokawa and JAXA scientists announced that Hayabusa had officially "arrived". In proximity of Itokawa On 15 September 2005, a 'colour' image of the asteroid was released (which is, however, grey in colouring). On 4 October, JAXA announced that the spacecraft had successfully moved to its 'Home Position' 7 km from Itokawa. Closeup pictures were released. It was also announced that the spacecraft's second reaction wheel, governing the Y-axis, had failed, and that the craft was now being pointed by its rotation thrusters. On November 3, Hayabusa took station 3.0 km from Itokawa. It then began its descent, planned to include delivery of a target marker, and release of the Minerva minilander. The descent went well initially, and navigation images with wide-angle cameras were obtained. However, at 01:50 UTC ( JST) on 4 November, it was announced that due to a detection of an anomalous signal at the Go/NoGo decision, the descent, including release of Minerva and the target marker had been canceled. The project manager, Junichiro Kawaguchi, explained that the optical navigation system was not tracking the asteroid very well, probably caused by the complex shape of Itokawa. A delay of a few days was required to evaluate the situation and reschedule. On 7 November, Hayabusa was 7.5 km from Itokawa. On November 9, Hayabusa performed a descent to to test the landing navigation and the laser altimeter. After that, Hayabusa backed off to a higher position, then descended again to and released one of the target markers into space to test the craft's ability to track it (this was confirmed). From analysis of the closeup images, the Woomera Desert site (Point B) was found to be too rocky to be suitable for landing. The Muses Sea site (Point A) was selected as the landing site, for both first and, if possible, second landings. On 12 November, Hayabusa closed in to from the asteroid's surface. MINERVA was released but due to an error failed to reach the surface. On 19 November, Hayabusa landed on the asteroid. There was considerable confusion during and after the maneuver about precisely what had happened, because the high-gain antenna of the probe could not be used during final phase of touch-down, as well as the blackout during handover of ground station antenna from DSN to Usuda station. It was initially reported that Hayabusa had stopped at approximately 10 meters from the surface, hovering for 30 minutes for unknown reasons. Ground control sent a command to abort and ascend, and by the time the communication was regained, the probe had moved 100 km away from the asteroid. The probe had entered into a safe mode, slowly spinning to stabilize attitude control. However, after regaining control and communication with the probe, the data from the landing attempt were downloaded and analyzed, and on 23 November, JAXA announced that the probe had indeed landed on the asteroid's surface. Unfortunately, the sampling sequence was not triggered since a sensor detected an obstacle during descent; the probe tried to abort the landing, but