[detaro]

Given the official statements describe the process as

"Today (12/6) at 03:07 JST, as a result of the beacon direction search, the capsule landing point has been estimated. Now, we will search by helicopter."

and

"Today (12/6) at 04:47 JST, as a result of the helicopter search, we found a capsule in the planned landing area!"

I don't think the beacon "transmitted location" and the headline seems accurate.

[defrost]

Not to mention the region of the world selected has a seventy year history of searching and mostly finding stuff that falls from the sky, it's part of the globes largest (land area wise) long range weapons testing complex dating back to post WWII British testing.

In the event of unexpected beacon failures, etc. there's a pre existing network of interlinked upward facing cameras and tracking software designed to assist finding rockets, meteorites, or plummeting blue whales.

[Maxious]

You can see the helicopter search path on flightradar24 https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/vh-syj/#263ad0f9

[dmurray]

> I don't think the beacon "transmitted location" and the headline seems accurate.

From TFA:

> The capsule then began transmitting a beacon with information about its position.

It reads to me like it absolutely was transmitting its location (why wouldn't it? I have a GPS receiver in my watch with 1-metre accuracy). It just took an hour or two to retrieve it because they waited until it was light.

[detaro]

https://www.hayabusa2.jaxa.jp/en/topics/20201204_ts4/

"However, a capsule on the ground in the dark will be very difficult to find. Therefore, we will search for the beacon signal, as mentioned in the previous article. Five antennas will be installed around the expected landing site, which will each record the direction of the signal. These directions will be reported to the headquarters and when plotted on a map, the intersection will reveal the position of the signal source (principal of triangulation). This method is the same as used for Hayabusa, but for Hayabusa2, considering the area we needed to cover and potential troubles, we decided to increase the number of stations by one and search with a total of five stations."