hayabusa2 mission parts made in china

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hayabusa2 mission dropped off its sample collection capsule before moving on to the next part of its extended mission: visiting more asteroids.

Hayabusa2 launched on December 3, 2014, and arrived at the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu in June 2018. The spacecraft collected one sample from the asteroid’s surface on February 22, 2019, then fired a copper “bullet” into the asteroid to create a 33-foot wide impact crater. A sample was collected from this crater on July 11, 2019.

The agency’s first Hayabusa mission returned samples from the asteroid Itokawa to Earth in June 2010, but scientists said that due to failure of the spacecraft’s sampling device, they were only able to retrieve micrograms of dust from the asteroid.

Since Hayabusa2 isn’t returning to Earth, it ejected the 35-pound sample return capsule as it swung by our planet at a distance of 136,701 miles. Then, the spacecraft changed its course to travel beyond Earth and move along with its extended mission.

“Just spotted #hayabusa2 from #ISS! Unfortunately not bright enough for handheld camera, but enjoyed watching capsule! Thanks Houston & Tsukuba for pointing information!!!”

Just spotted #hayabusa2 from #ISS! Unfortunately not bright enough for handheld camera, but enjoyed watching capsule! Thanks Houston & Tsukuba for pointing information!!!— NOGUCHI, Soichi 野口　聡一（のぐち　そういち） (@Astro_Soichi) December 5, 2020

The Australian government granted JAXA permission to land its capsule in the Woomera Prohibited Area in South Australia. This remote area is used by Australia’s Department of Defence for testing.

Hayabusa2 will fly by three asteroids between 2026 and 2031, eventually reaching the rapidly rotating micro-asteroid 1998 KY26 in July 2031 millions of miles from Earth. It will be the first flyby of this type of asteroid.

“I anticipate that the Hayabusa2 samples of asteroid Ryugu will be very similar to the meteorite that fell in Australia near Murchison, Victoria, more than 50 years ago,” said Trevor Ireland, professor in the Australian National University Research School of Earth Sciences and a member of the Hayabusa2 science team in Woomera, in a statement.

The NASA OSIRIS-REx mission recently collected a sample from another near-Earth asteroid, Bennu, that is similar in composition to Ryugu. In fact, based on early data from both missions, scientists working on both missions believe it’s possible these two asteroids once belonged to the same larger parent body before it was broken apart by an impact.

Japan’s mission to bring asteroid dust back to Earth has succeeded. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) confirmed on 14 December that a capsule from spacecraft Hayabusa2, which landed in an Australian desert last week, contained black grains from asteroid Ryugu.

“The confirmation of sample is a very important milestone for us and for JAXA,” says Yuichi Tsuda, project manager for the mission at JAXA, in Sagamihara.

“Images that Hayabusa2 took during its landing operations made us confident that the spacecraft collected Ryugu samples,” wrote Satoru Nakazawa, deputy manager of the mission, in an e-mail while in Woomera, Australia. But the team couldn’t know for sure until they disassembled the capsule and saw the dark dust.

Once the capsule is fully unsealed, possibly later today, JAXA scientists will measure the material’s mass and study its composition and structure. They hope to have collected at least 0.1 grams of material, says Yoshikawa Makoto, mission manager for Hayabusa2 at JAXA.

Hayabusa2 collected the samples over a year and a half of poking and prodding Ryugu—a small asteroid shaped like a squashed sphere, peppered with giant boulders. Ryugu is a C-type, or carbon-rich, asteroid, which scientists think contains organic and hydrated minerals preserved from as far back as 4.6 billion years ago. The samples could help to explain how Earth became covered with water. Scientists think it came on asteroids or similar planetary bodies from the outer regions of the Solar System.

Hayabusa2 has now begun its 11-year journey to its next destination: a fast-rotating asteroid known as 1998 KY26. To reach it, the spacecraft will fly by another asteroid—2001 CC21—and swing past Earth another two times.

“Up to now we know several top-shaped asteroids, but all of them have a short spin period around 3 hours,” said Makoto Yoshikawa, the Hayabusa2 mission’s manager. “The spin period of Ryugu is about 7.5 hours, so this issue is quite interesting from the point of science.”

If the spacecraft is able to keep its schedule, by the end of July, Hayabusa2 will descend within 3.1 miles of Ryugu’s surface to measure the gravity field around the asteroid. In September or October, Hayabusa2 is scheduled to make its first “touchdown operation” on the asteroid.

TOKYO (AP) — A small capsule containing asteroid soil samples that was dropped from 136,700 miles (220,000 kilometers) in space by Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft landed as planned in the Australian Outback on Sunday. After a preliminary inspection, it will be flown to Japan for research. The extremely high precision required to carry out the mission thrilled many in Japan, who said they took pride in its success. The project’s manager, Yuichi Tsuda of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, called the capsule a “treasure box.” The AP explains the significance of the project and what comes next.

Launched on Dec. 3, 2014, the unmanned Hayabusa2 spacecraft touched down twice on the asteroid Ryugu, more than 300 million kilometers (190 million miles) away from Earth. The asteroid’s extremely rocky surface forced the mission’s team to revise landing plans, but the spacecraft successfully collected data and soil samples during the 1½ years it spent near Ryugu after arriving there in June 2018.

In its first touchdown in February 2019, the spacecraft collected surface dust samples, similar to NASA’s recent touch-and-go grab by Osiris REx on the asteroid Bennu. Hayabusa2 later blasted a crater into the asteroid’s surface and then collected underground samples from the asteroid, a first for space history. In late 2019, Hayabusa2 left Ryugu. That yearlong journey ended Sunday.

After about a year, some of the samples will be shared with NASA and other international scientists. About 40% of them will be stored for future research. JAXA mission manager Makoto Yoshikawa said just 0.1 gram of the sample can be enough to conduct the planned research, though he said more would be better.

Hayabusa2 is a successor of the original Hayabusa mission that Japan launched in 2003. After a series of technical setbacks, it sent back samples from another asteroid, Itokawa, in 2010. The spacecraft was burned up in a failed re-entry but the capsule made it to Earth.

Many Japanese were impressed by the first Hayabusa spaceship’s return, which was considered a miracle given all the troubles it encountered. JAXA’s subsequent Venus and Mars missions also were flawed. Tsuda said the Hayabusa2 team used all the hard lessons learned from the earlier missions to accomplish a 100 times better than “perfect” outcome. Some members of the public who watched the event shed tears as the capsule successfully entered the atmosphere, briefly flaring into a fireball.

About an hour after separating from the capsule at 220,000 kilometers (136,700 miles) from Earth, Hayabusa2 was sent on another mission to the smaller asteroid, 1998KY26. That is an 11-year journey one-way. The mission is to study possible ways to prevent big meteorites from colliding with Earth.

Hayabusa 2 is an Asteroid exploration mission by the Japanese Space Exploration Agency setting out to study Asteroid 1999 JU3, dispatch a series of landers and a penetrator, and acquire sample material for return to Earth. The mission builds on the original Hayabusa mission that launched in 2003 and successfully linked up with asteroid Itokawa in 2005 and returned samples to Earth in 2010 marking the first time sample materials from an asteroid were brought back to Earth.

Hayabusa 2 is planned to complete a mission of six years – launching in December 2014 and traveling through the solar system for three and a half years, arriving at 1999 JU3 in July 2018 to spend 18 months studying the asteroid before making its return to Earth in December 2020.

Another payload of the mission is an impactor device that will be deployed towards the asteroid and uses high-explosives to generate a high-speed impact that is hoped to expose material from under the asteroid’s surface for later collection by Hayabusa 2. A deployable camera will be used to document the impact of the penetrator.

Over the next two weeks, teams were fighting to keep the mission alive since the spacecraft was loosing attitude control – its reaction wheels had already failed and the thruster leak caused the vehicle to spin – pointing its solar arrays away from the sun leading to power issues and pointing the communication antennas away from Earth. After attempts to correct the attitude by venting xenon gas through the ion thruster system, contact with the probe was lost on December 8 due to a sudden change in orientation. To stabilize, Hayabusa needed time for the conversion of precession rate to pure rotation which was expected to take several weeks.

With Hayabusa 1 still on its way through the solar system, a possible follow-on mission was proposed in 2006 to closely resemble the original mission featuring a nearly identical spacecraft with only minor changes to respond to issues seen during the Hayabusa mission. With the initial drive to fly the mission as soon as possible teams were hoping to launch in 2010 or 2011, but the budget did not permit a launch then. The additional development time allowed more changes to be made to the original spacecraft design to use more advanced and robust systems and modify the payload suite, also acquiring international support from NASA and a team of the German Aerospace Center and CNES. New systems were added including a Ka-Band antenna and impactor.

Asteroid 1999 JU3 was discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) that has been heavily studied using ground and space-based telescopes. Telescopic data shows that the asteroid is about 920 meters in size and has a rotation period of 7.6 hours. Spectroscopic analysis showed that that asteroid belongs to the C-type class of primitive bodies. Data also suggests that the asteroid, at some point in its life, was in contact with water. JU3 orbits the sun in an orbit of 0.963 by 1.416 Astronomical units, inclined 5.88 degrees. This orbit, stretching from Earth’s orbit out to just outside the orbit of Mars with a small inclination makes the object suitable for a return mission.

Asteroids can be divided into different classes based on their composition with each group showing different distributions within the asteroid belt between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter, depending on their distance to the sun. While Hayabusa studied and returned sample from an S-type asteroid that are stony in composition, the follow-on mission will explore a C-type asteroid.

Other asteroid types that can be found farther from the sun are P- and D-type asteroids that are not abundantly found on Earth due to their stable orbits in the outer region of the asteroid belt or as Jovian Trojans. It is desired that a possible Hayabusa 2 follow-on mission would study one of these types of bodies to get a full picture of the composition of the different primitive bodies.

The Hayabusa 2 spacecraft is similar in architecture to the first Hayabusa spacecraft with a number of notable changes, not only to the instrument and payload suite, but also to the spacecraft platform itself. These changes include the addition of a reaction wheel to create a redundant configuration, the addition of a Ka-Band communications system and changes to the Ion Engine System using more robust technology. Components kept from the original mission allow teams to rely on flight-proven technology that has shown to perform well over the course of a mission lasting over half a decade.

The original Hayabusa spacecraft had only three reaction wheels that were also capable of controlling the orientation on all axes, but did not have any redundancy. Early in the mission, one of the wheels failed followed by another later in the flight, requiring Hayabusa to rely on its engines to maintain its attitude. The addition of a fourth wheel ensures that the system can tolerate the failure of one of the wheels without losing any attitude control capabilities.

Two redundant Inertial Reference Units are used to augment attitude determination and for use to measure body rates in order to stabilize the spacecraft rates so that the star trackers can acquire star patterns which requires the spacecraft to dampen body rates to a certain level. The accelerometers provide insight into the operation of the propulsion system, allowing the precise tracking of the achieved changes in velocity supplied by the Ion Engine System that will be in operation for several thousand hours over the course of the six year mission.

Improvements made to the propulsion system from Hayabusa 1 to 2 include a 25% increase in thrust and added mechanisms to prevent plasma ignition malfunctions in the ion source. The neutralizer, that had shown degradation after the first 10,000 hours of operation, was improved by protecting the outer walls from plasma and by strengthening the magnetic field to decrease the applied voltage needed for the emission of electrons. Hayabusa 2’s ion thrusters are planned to operate for over 18,000 hours.

Having two high gain communication systems adds redundancy and also expands the vehicle’s overall capabilities in terms of downlink volume. The X-Band system will be used for day-to-day operations, that is, telemetry downlink and command uplink to the spacecraft. The Ka-Band system is primarily used for the downlink of science data, taking advantage of its higher downlink rate of 32kbit/s. The Ka-Band system also allows for a more precise DDOR (Delta-Differential One-way Ranging) that will complement the normal line-of-sight ranging and doppler measurements for improved navigation during the mission.

To serve as a demonstrator for future deep-space optical communications, LIDAR will be used around the time of the Earth flyby one year into the mission when a laser pulse will be sent from Earth to be received by LIDAR that will immediately return a pulse to the ground station to demonstrate a basic link experiment. The ground station to be used is NICT Koganei, using a 1.2J laser operating at a pulse repetition rate of 10 Hz.

The Impact Sampling System of the Hayabusa 2 mission is almost identical to that of its predecessor – firing a projectile into the asteroid that ejects small grains of material which are caught in a sampling horn and travel up the sample collection system to be sealed in containers that will eventually be returned to Earth. The sampling system from bottom to top consists of a metal aluminum skirt, an extendable fabric horn, a conical horn funneling the sample into the spacecraft to the sample catchers and the sample container inside the Return Capsule.

The optical system of the NIRS3 instrument consists of an aperture cover, a field stopslit, two mirrors, a diffraction grating, camera lenses, a detector and two calibration targets. The Al/Ge optical components reside on a stable optical bench protected by a carbon-fiber reinforced plastic box case. Infrared light entering the spectrometer through the 70 by 70-micron slit is dispersed by a flat transmission diffraction grating combined with a cross disperser. The mirrors then direct the dispersed light to the optics that re-focus the first-order light onto the detector. The spectrometer has a field of view of 0.1 by 0.1 degrees..

The Thermal Infrared Imager of the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft will deliver valuable information on the physical properties of the asteroid’s surface by monitoring regional variations of thermal inertia, thermal emissions, and temporal variations of surface temperature.

During the mission, TIR operates for one 7.6-hour asteroid rotation per week while more operating time will be available for global mapping at high phase angles. Smaller sites such as boulders and craters are identified during the mapping of the asteroid and will be observed by TIR when favorable passes occur. The instrument is active during the descent and touchdown phase for close-up and in-situ observations.

The Return Capsule of Hayabusa 2 is similar to that flown on the first mission, capable of returning the Sample Container with three filled sample catchers to Earth, performing a re-entry at a speed of 12km/s for a parachute-assisted landing in the Woomera Test Range in Australia. The Return Capsule has a total mass of 16.5 Kilograms, measures 40 centimeters in diameter and stands 20 centimeters tall.

The Hayabusa 2 mission includes a series of landing craft that are hitching a ride to the asteroid aboard the spacecraft, namely a series of three MINERVA II rovers developed at Japanese Universities and JAXA, and the MASCOT lander, a contribution from the German Aerospace Center and the French Space Agency CNES.

MASCOT – the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout is a small lander developed by the German Aerospace Center and the French Space Agency using knowledge gained from the development of the Philae lander of the Rosetta mission that became the first craft to make a soft landing on a comet in November 2014. Initial studies of the lander began in 2008 and its realization was decided by JAXA, DLR and CNES in 2012.

The MASCOT lander is designed to be able to hop from one location to another using a mobility system that will allow it to collect data from several locations while its battery lasts which is expected to be around 12 to 16 hours. The lander measures 0.3 by 0.3 by 0.2 meters in size with a mass of 10 Kilograms containing a number of subsystems including four instruments – a wide-angle camera, an imaging infrared spectrometer, a radiometer payload, and a magnetometer. Data from the instruments will significantly enhance the overall science return from the Hayabusa 2 mission, providing extensive in-situ data from the surface of an asteroid. The science payload has a mass of around 3 Kilograms.

Due to the lander’s limited mission timeline, thermal control can be accomplished with Multilayer Insulation and color coatings. Heaters are only used by the batteries and the spectrometer payload that have to be kept within survival temperature ranges during the cruise phase.

The lander is capable of receiving commands from Earth, relayed via the HY-2 spacecraft in case any intervention in the automated science sequence is needed due to any issues. Communications during cruise are accomplished through a Mechanical & Electrical Interface Antenna installed on the HY-2 spacecraft which eliminates the need for a hard-line data connection for cruise operations which include regular checkouts of the lander. The antennas operate at a frequency of 954 MHz using circular polarization. The link with HY-2 can be maintained up to a distance of 150 Kilometers achieving data rates of up to 16kbit/s, amounting to a total data volume of 0.7Gbit to be sent over the course of the lander’s mission.

The MASCOT lander uses two fully redundant Central Processing and Input/Output boards to ensure good control of the lander throughout its mission. The CPU boards use a LEON3FT processing unit that provides processing, reconfiguration and timing functions, data input/output and customization capabilities.

The CPU board also provides MRAM, SRAM and SDRAM. MASCOT uses a SpaceWire high-speed data bus and analog UART interfaces, all connected to the onboard computer by an FPGA-based input-output card. MASCOT’s control system includes an Autonomy Manager that is capable of autonomously controlling the entire surface mission of the lander to include as many sampling operations as possible.

An AOTF (Acousto-Optic Tunable Filter) is an electro-optical device that serves as an electronically tunable spectral bandpass filter with no moving parts. It uses a crystal in which Radio Frequency Waves are used to separate a single wavelength of light from a broadband source. The output wavelength is a function of the RF frequency that is applied to the crystal which can be varied.

Within the spectrometer, the AOTF acts as the monochromator. This design provides a number of advantages including long-term wavelength repeatability, extremely high wavelength purity, fast response to RF changes so that spectra can be recorded within seconds, high efficiency and long service life (no moving parts).

The spectral range and resolution of the instrument allows the identification of most potential constituents of the surface including silicates, oxides, salts, hydrated minerals, ices and frosts as well as organic compounds that are the focus of the entire mission to a C-type asteroid.

Images created by the cameras are thumbnail sized due to the low data speeds and MINERVA employs an onboard image processing tool that cuts any parts of a picture that do not contain a scene to minimize uplink volume. Surface temperature measurements at different locations and at different times of day are of great interest to scientists to better understand the energy balance of the asteroid and its surface material.

Hayabusa2 is a Japanese spacecraft that studied asteroid Ryugu, collected samples, and brought them to Earth for analysis. The spacecraft is on an extended mission to asteroid 1998 KY26.

Hayabusa2 is a Japanese spacecraft that explored asteroid Ryugu (162173) from June 2018 to November 2019. It dispatched a series of landers and a penetrator, and it collected multiple samples from the asteroid.

JAXA launched Hayabusa2 in December 2014 to collect samples from Ryugu. After arriving at the asteroid in June 2018, Hayabusa2 deployed two rovers and a small lander on the surface. Then, on Feb. 22, 2019, Hayabusa2 fired an impactor into the asteroid to create an artificial crater. This allowed the spacecraft to retrieve a sample beneath Ryugu’s surface.

This movie was taken on Feb. 22, 2019, (JST) when Hayabusa2 first touched down on asteroid Ryugu to collect a sample from the surface. It was captured using the onboard small monitor camera (CAM-H). The video playback speed is five times faster than the actual time. Credit: JAXA

On Dec. 6, 2020, Hayabusa2 delivered the asteroid sample to Earth. The spacecraft swooped by Earth to drop a landing capsule containing the asteroid sample. The capsule made a fiery entry through our planet’s atmosphere and parachuted to a soft landing inside the Woomera Range Complex in the South Australian outback. The spacecraft is now on an extended mission to a smaller asteroid, called 1998 KY26.

Both missions explored carbonaceous asteroids, which are thought to be the rocky building blocks of the early solar system. These asteroids could help scientists better understand how the solar system formed, and how life later emerged.

On Nov. 30, 2021, NASA received 23 millimeter-sized grains and 4 containers of even finer material from Ryugu – 10% of the total collected by Hayabusa2. A JAXA official and a JAXA scientist delivered the asteroid fragments to the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Hayabusa2 is a follow-up to Japan’s original Hayabusa mission, which was the first spacecraft to take samples from an asteroid, and was also the first mission to successfully land and take off from an asteroid. It returned samples from asteroid 25143 Itokawa to Earth on June 13, 2010.

The samples were snagged millions of miles from Earth by Japan"s Hayabusa2 mission, which studied the 3,000-foot-wide (900 meters) Ryugu up close from June 2018 to November 2019.

Hayabusa2"s predecessor was the first to haul space-rock samples home, delivering pieces of the stony asteroid Itokawa in 2010. But the original Hayabusa (Japanese for "peregrine falcon") returned less than 1 milligram of material. Hayabusa2"s bounty is expected to exceed 100 mg (0.0035 ounces), and its samples come from a very different kind of asteroid — a primitive "C-type" space rock rich in water and carbon-containing organic compounds.

"The materials that formed the Earth, its oceans and life were present in the primordial cloud from which our solar system formed. In the early solar system, these materials were in contact and able to chemically interact within the same parent objects," Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) officials wrote in an overview of Hayabusa2.

Having the samples here on Earth is key; scientists in well-equipped labs around the world can scrutinize the cosmic rock in far greater detail than Hayabusa2, or any other probe on its own in deep space, ever could. The returned material"s purity is also a major selling point. Researchers already have access to many meteorites, but these "free samples" of asteroids have been significantly altered by their trip through Earth"s atmosphere and their time on our planet"s surface.

The 1,340-lb. (690 kilograms) Hayabusa2 spacecraft launched in December 2014 and rendezvoused with the rugged Ryugu on June 27, 2018, kicking off an epic exploration campaign.

Hayabusa2 observed Ryugu in detail and also deployed multiple miniprobes onto the asteroid"s surface — several tiny, hopping rovers and a microwave-sized lander called MASCOT (Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout), which was provided by the German Aerospace Center in collaboration with the French space agency CNES.

The main Hayabusa2 spacecraft made two trips of its own to Ryugu"s surface, both times to snag samples. During the first of these operations, in February 2019, Hayabusa2 scooped up some surface material. In April of that year, the spacecraft fired a 5.5-lb. (2.5 kg) copper projectile at Ryugu, blasting a 33-foot-wide (10 m) crater into the asteroid"s surface. Then, that July, the probe swooped down and collected some of this recently excavated dirt and rock.

Hayabusa2 kept these two samples separate, so scientists will be able to compare material from two very different environments — Ryugu"s surface, which is weathered by space radiation, and the asteroid"s more protected depths.

With these samples secured, Hayabusa2 left Ryugu in November 2019 and headed home. On Nov. 26 of this year, when Hayabusa2 was about 2.2 million miles (3.6 million kilometers) from Earth, the probe fired its engines in a key trajectory-refining burn. The maneuver put Hayabusa2 on course toward a 6-mile-wide (10 km) slice of sky over Woomera — the precision equivalent of targeting a ladybug from 0.6 miles (1 km) away, JAXA officials wrote in a post-burn update.

Hayabusa2 released the 16-inch-wide (40 centimeters) return capsule on Friday night (Dec. 4), at a distance of about 137,000 miles (220,000 km) from our planet, JAXA officials said. The main spacecraft then conducted another engine burn to head away from Earth, for its work is not done: JAXA recently approved an extended mission for Hayabusa2, which will fly by the small asteroid (98943) 2001 CC21 in 2026 and rendezvous with yet another space rock, 1998 KY26, in 2031.

After securing and inspecting the craft, Hayabusa2 team members will transport it to JAXA"s Extraterrestrial Sample Curation Center in Japan. This facility, which was completed in 2008, was designed specifically to house and study cosmic material brought home by space missions.

The goals of Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx are broadly similar, and the two mission teams have been working together extensively over the past few years to help achieve them. That collaboration will extend to the sharing of samples after touchdown, members of both teams have said.

JAXA is working on its own Mars sample-return project — a mission called Martian Moons Exploration (MMX), which is scheduled to launch in 2024. MMX will grab samples of Phobos, one of the Red Planet"s two small moons, and bring them to Earth for analysis.

The mission will swing by our planet to drop off a capsule full of regolith from asteroid Ryugu, before departing to visit another asteroid in 2031 on its newly extended mission.

The first event is return capsule"s separation from the main Hayabusa2 spacecraft, which took place Friday at 11:30 p.m. EST (0430 GMT Saturday, Dec. 4).J JAXA webcast it live on YouTube here(opens in new tab).

The capsule will then reenter the Earth"s atmosphere en route to its landing in Woomera in southern Australia, the same region in which predecessor mission Hayabusa delivered its asteroid sample in 2010.

NASA also has an asteroid sample return underway. The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission picked up even more regolith than expected at its asteroid, called Bennu. The spacecraft stowed the sample safely in October and is expected to return that to Earth in 2023.

All of this went a long way toward helping scientists better understand Ryugu, a primitive rock rich in carbon, though more porous, rubbly, and containing less hydrated minerals than initially predicted. Asteroids like Ryugu are the most common type, but because they are so dark, they are tricky to study through telescopes. Even observations like Hayabusa2’s are limited since there are only so many kinds of instruments you can send into space, and they don’t always survive the journey (one of Hayabusa2’s four rovers actually failed before its release).

But nothing compares to the analysis we can do inside state-of-the-art labs on Earth. That brings us to the marquee purpose of Hayabusa2: to bring a sample of Ryugu back to Earth.

Sample return missions are becoming increasingly in vogue, as evidenced by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission and China’s current Chang’e 5 drilling operation on the moon. But they aren’t easy. In February 2019, Hayabusa2 landed on the surface and fired two small bullets into the asteroid to stir up a cloud of particles from which the sample arm could collect debris. It fired a larger projectile in April that same year, diving down to the surface a couple months later to retrieve even more ejected material.

Whereas the first Hayabusa mission was only able to bring back a millionth of a gram through this approach, there’s optimism Hayabusa2 will bring back much more. “I am proud of this success, even though I don’t know yet that the re-entry [of the sample capsule] will be successful,” says Eri Tatsumi, a planetary scientist at the University of La Laguna in Spain who has been working directly with Hayabusa2’s data so far.

In addition, there are some peculiar things about Ryugu’s history that require the type of context you can only get from laboratory analysis. Tomokatsu Morota, a planetary scientist from the University of Tokyo, led a team that studied Ryugu’s surface using images taken by Hayabusa2’s cameras. The team noticed alterations on the surface caused by solar heating. “This suggests a scenario where Ryugu underwent an orbital excursion near the sun,” he says. A closer look at the rock fragments could help confirm whether that happened or not.

Hayabusa2 will drop off the sample capsule of Ryugu material in just a few days. It must survive a fiery reentry before landing in Australia. The spacecraft itself, however, will head back out for an extended mission—first to asteroid 2001 CC21 for a flyby in July 2026, and then a formal rendezvous with asteroid 1998 KY26 in July 2031. In between those highlights the spacecraft will make a pair of swings around Earth while attempting to make observations of distant exoplanets.

Hayabusa2’s success will live on in future sample return missions too. JAXA is planning one for the Martian moon Phobos, called Martian Moon eXploration, or MMX. “MMX is technically made from a lot of the heritage established by Hayabusa and Hayabusa2,” says Tatsumi. “And Hayabusa2’s project involved many young scientists and engineers who will lead next generation’s missions. Given those experiences, JAXA can launch more complicated and larger missions in the future.”

They resemble small fragments of charcoal, but the soil samples collected from an asteroid and returned to Earth by a Japanese spacecraft were hardly disappointing. The samples Japanese space officials described Thursday are as big as one centimetre (0.4 inches) and rock hard, not breaking when picked up or poured into another container. Smaller black, sandy granules the spacecraft collected and returned separately were described last week. The Hayabusa2 spacecraft got the two sets of samples last year from two locations on the asteroid Ryugu, more than 300 million kilometres (190 million miles) from Earth. It dropped them from space onto a target in the Australian Outback, and the samples were brought to Japan in early December.

This image shows soil samples, seen inside C compartment of the capsule brought back by Hayabusa2, in Sagamihara, near Tokyo. Japanese space officials said Thursday they found more asteroid soil samples collected and brought back from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft, in addition to black sandy granules they found last week, raising their hopes of finding clues to the origins of the solar system. Image credit: Twitter/JAXA

To get the second set of samples in July last year, Hayabusa2 dropped an impactor to blast below the asteroid’s surface, collecting material from the crafter so it would be unaffected by space radiation and other environmental factors.

Hayabusa2, meanwhile, is on an 11-year expedition to another small and distant asteroid, 1998KY26, to try to study possible defences against meteorites that could fly toward Earth.

The capsule was part of Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission to survey Ryugu, and separated from the main Hayabusa2 spacecraft on 5 December. From there, the capsule deployed a radar-reflective parachute and made its way 10km down to Earth.  It then landed in several parts, with the main capsule, parachute, and the front and back heat shields becoming separated during the landing. All parts have since been recovered with the assistance of Australian authorities.

Hayabusa2 is an asteroid sample-return mission launched on 3 December 2014, to explore the near-earth asteroid Ryugu, which is approximately 1km in diameter. The main spacecraft Hayabusa2 took four years to reach Ryugu, and rendezvoused with the asteroid on 27 June 2018. After approximately a year and a half of sampling, Hayabusa2 left the asteroid in November 2019 and began a year-long journey back to Earth. On 5 December, the main spacecraft released its re-entry capsule containing the samples, which has now made it back safely.

Although the mission has technically been completed, Hayabusa2 still carries 30kg of propellant – about half its original fuel load of 66kg. JAXA has decided to further utilize the spacecraft for an extended mission that will survey two more asteroids: near-earth asteroid (98943) 2001 CC, with a target flyby date of 2026 (the asteroid will come within 19,427,954 km of Earth in 2023), and then to another near-earth asteroid 1998 KY26, which is a near-spherical fast-rotator, which it hopes to reach by 2031.

Altogether, 2 samples were collected. The first batch, containing surface material, was collected on 21 February 2019. To do this, Hayabusa2 descended to approach the surface of the asteroid, and launched a projectile into the surface, causing an ejection of material. The material was then captured by making use of the asteroid’s microgravity to lure it into a catcher.

The second batch, collected on 11 July 2019, was of sub-surface material that was excavated via a two-step method. First, on 5 April that year, Hayabusa2 released a “gun” called the Small Carry-on Impactor (SCI), which carried a copper projectile that was subsequently shot onto the surface with an explosive propellant charge. This excavated a crater about 10m in diameter. Following that, in July, touchdown and sampling was carried out. On 26 August, the sample catcher was stored in the re-entry capsule for return to Earth

The next 10 years will see Japan conduct some very exciting missions, beginning with the country’s first lunar surface mission in early 2020, which goes by the name of SLIM. Following that in, 2023, JAXA will launch DESTINY+, a mission to conduct a flyby of the meteor shower parent body 3200 Phaethon.A year after that, in 2024, Japan will begin a Martian mission, Martian Moons Exploration (MMX), which will study the moons Phobos and Deimos, and collect samples from Phobos. If successful, it will be the first time Japan reaches Mars, after a failed attempt in 1998.

A sample-return mission is a spacecraft mission to collect and return samples from an extraterrestrial location to Earth for analysis. Sample-return missions may bring back merely atoms and molecules or a deposit of complex compounds such as loose material and rocks. These samples may be obtained in a number of ways, such as soil and rock excavation or a collector array used for capturing particles of solar wind or cometary debris. Nonetheless, concerns have been raised that the return of such samples to planet Earth may endanger Earth itself.

To date, samples of Moon rock from Earth"s Moon have been collected by robotic and crewed missions, the comet Wild 2 and the asteroids 25143 Itokawa and 162173 Ryugu have been visited by robotic spacecraft which returned samples to Earth, and samples of the solar wind have been returned by the robotic 101955 Bennu are en route back to Earth and are expected to arrive in September 2023.

In addition to sample-return missions, samples from three identified non-terrestrial bodies have been collected by other means: samples from the Moon in the form of Lunar meteorites, samples from Mars in the form of Martian meteorites, and samples from Vesta in the form of HED meteorites.

Samples available on Earth can be analyzed in laboratories, so we can further our understanding and knowledge as part of the discovery and exploration of the Solar System. Until now, many important scientific discoveries about the Solar System were made remotely with telescopes, and some Solar System bodies were visited by orbiting or even landing spacecraft with instruments capable of remote sensing or sample analysis. While such an investigation of the Solar System is technically easier than a sample-return mission, the scientific tools available on Earth to study such samples are far more advanced and diverse than those that can go on spacecraft. Further, analysis of samples on Earth allows follow up of any findings with different tools, including tools that can tell intrinsic extraterrestrial material from terrestrial contamination,

One further focus of such investigation—besides the basic composition and geologic history of the various Solar System bodies—is the presence of the building blocks of life on comets, asteroids, Mars or the moons of the gas giants. Several sample-return missions to asteroids and comets are currently in the works. More samples from asteroids and comets will help determine whether life formed in space and was carried to Earth by meteorites. Another question under investigation is whether extraterrestrial life formed on other Solar System bodies like Mars or on the moons of the gas giants, and whether life might even exist there. The result of NASA"s last "Decadal Survey" was to prioritize a Mars sample-return mission, as Mars has a special importance: it is comparatively "nearby", might have harbored life in the past, and might even continue to sustain life. Jupiter"s moon Europa is another important focus in the search for life in the Solar System. However, due to the distance and other constraints, Europa might not be the target of a sample-return mission in the foreseeable future.

Planetary protection aims to prevent biological contamination of both the target celestial body and the Earth in the case of sample-return missions. A sample return from Mars or other location with the potential to host life is a category V mission under COSPAR, which directs to the containment of any unsterilized sample returned to Earth. This is because it is unknown what the effects such hypothetical life would be on humans or the biosphere of Earth.Carl Sagan and Joshua Lederberg argued in the 1970s that we should do sample-return missions classified as category V missions with extreme caution, and later studies by the NRC and ESF agreed.

The Apollo program returned over 382 kg (842 lb) of lunar rocks and regolith (including lunar "soil") to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston.Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility built in 1979.Apollo 11 achieved the first successful sample return from another Solar System body. It returned approximately 22 kilograms (49 lb) of Lunar surface material. This was followed by 34 kilograms (75 lb) of material and Surveyor 3 parts from Apollo 12, 42.8 kilograms (94 lb) of material from Apollo 14, 76.7 kilograms (169 lb) of material from Apollo 15, 94.3 kilograms (208 lb) of material from Apollo 16, and 110.4 kilograms (243 lb) of material from Apollo 17.

One of the most significant advances in sample-return missions occurred in 1970 when the robotic Soviet mission known as Luna 16 successfully returned 101 grams (3.6 oz) of lunar soil. Likewise, Luna 20 returned 55 grams (1.9 oz) in 1974, and Luna 24 returned 170 grams (6.0 oz) in 1976. Although they recovered far less than the Apollo missions, they did this fully automatically. Apart from these three successes, other attempts under the Luna programme failed. The first two missions were intended to outstrip Apollo 11 and were undertaken shortly before them in June and July 1969: Luna E-8-5 No. 402 failed at start, and Luna 15 crashed on the Moon. Later, other sample-return missions failed: Kosmos 300 and Kosmos 305 in 1969, Luna E-8-5 No. 405 in 1970, Luna E-8-5M No. 412 in 1975 had unsuccessful launches, and Luna 18 in 1971 and Luna 23 in 1974 had unsuccessful landings on the Moon.

In 1970, the Soviet Union planned for a 1975 first Martian sample-return mission in the Mars 5NM project. This mission was planned to use an N1 rocket, but as this rocket never flew successfully, the mission evolved into the Mars 5M project, which would use a double launch with the smaller Proton rocket and an assembly at a Salyut space station. This Mars 5M mission was planned for 1979, but was canceled in 1977 due to technical problems and complexity; all hardware was ordered destroyed.

The next mission to return extraterrestrial samples was the Genesis capsule failed to open its parachute while re-entering the Earth"s atmosphere and crash-landed in the Utah desert. There were fears of severe contamination or even total mission loss, but scientists managed to save many of the samples. They were the first to be collected from beyond lunar orbit. Genesis used a collector array made of wafers of ultra-pure silicon, gold, sapphire, and diamond. Each different wafer was used to collect a different part of the solar wind.

The Russian Fobos-Grunt was a failed sample-return mission designed to return samples from Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. It was launched on November 8, 2011, but failed to leave Earth orbit and crashed after several weeks into the southern Pacific Ocean.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the improved Hayabusa2 arrived at the target near-Earth C-type asteroid 162173 Ryugu (previously designated

China launched the Chang"e 5 lunar sample return mission on November 23, 2020, which returned to Earth with 2 kilograms of lunar soil on December 16, 2020.

JAXA is developing the MMX mission, a sample-return mission to Phobos that will be launched in 2024.moons of Mars, but the landing and the sample collection will be on Phobos. This selection was made because of the two moons, Phobos"s orbit is closer to Mars and its surface may have particles blasted from Mars. Thus the sample may contain material originating on Mars itself.

China will launch the Chang"e 6 lunar sample return mission in 2023. China is also planning a mission called Tianwen-2 to return samples from 469219 Kamoʻoalewa which is planned to launch in 2024.Chinese Space Agency is designing a sample-retrieval mission from Ceres that would take place during the 2020s.

NASA and ESA has long planned a Mars Sample-Return Mission,Perseverance rover, deployed in 2020, is collecting drill core samples and stashing them on the Mars surface.ESA mission to return them is planned for the late twenties, consisting of a lander to retrieve the samples and raise them into orbit, and an orbiter to return them to Earth.

Comet sample-return missions also continue to be a NASA priority. Comet Surface Sample Return was one of the six themes for proposals for NASA"s fourth New Frontiers mission in 2017.

Some of the riskiest and most difficult types of sample-return missions are those that require landing on an extraterrestrial body such as an asteroid, moon, or planet. It takes a great deal of time, money, and technical ability to even initiate such plans. It is a difficult feat that requires that everything from launch to landing to retrieval and launch back to Earth is planned out with high precision and accuracy.

This type of sample return, although having the most risks, is the most rewarding for planetary science. Furthermore, such missions carry a great deal of public outreach potential, which is an important attribute for space exploration when it comes to public support. The only successful robotic sample-return missions of this type have been the Soviet Luna landers and Chinese Chang"e 5.

Japan"s Hayabusa2 probe made a "perfect" touchdown Thursday on a distant asteroid, collecting samples from beneath the surface in an unprecedented mission that could shed light on the origins of the solar system.

The brief landing Thursday is the second time Hayabusa2 has touched down on the desolate asteroid Ryugu, some 300 million kilometres (185 million miles) from Earth.

To get at those crucial materials, in April an "impactor" was fired from Hayabusa2 towards Ryugu in a risky process that created a crater on the asteroid"s surface and stirred up material that had not previously been exposed to the atmosphere.

Hayabusa2"s first touchdown was in February, when it landed briefly on Ryugu and fired a bullet into the surface to puff up dust for collection, before blasting back to its holding position.

A photo of the crater taken by Hayabusa2"s camera after the April blast showed that parts of the asteroid"s surface are covered with materials that are "obviously different" from the rest of the surface, mission manager Makoto Yoshikawa told reporters before the latest touchdown.

The touchdown is the last major part of Hayabusa2"s mission, and when the probe returns to Earth next year to drop off its samples, scientists hope to learn more about the history of the solar system and even the origin of life on Earth.

The Hayabusa2 mission has attracted international attention, with Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May sending a video to the probes team ahead of the landing.

Hayabusa2 is the successor to JAXA"s first asteroid explorer, Hayabusa -- Japanese for falcon, which returned with dust samples from a smaller, potato-shaped asteroid in 2010.

Tokyo, Japan (AFP) Jul 11 - Japan"s Hayabusa2 space probe made its second touchdown on a distant asteroid on Thursday, in a bid to collect mineral samples that could reveal more about the solar system"s evolution.

But its main mission was to observe and sample the surface of Ryugu, an asteroid some 300 million kilometres (187 million miles) from Earth that is believed to be relatively unchanged since the solar system was formed some 4.6 billion years ago.

Hayabusa2 is equipped with various types of technology to help it observe and sample Ryugu, including a camera, that has beamed back images of the desolate asteroid"s surface, and sensing equipment to record an array of data.

It took it three-and-a-half years to get to Ryugu, but the return journey should be significantly shorter because Earth and the asteroid will be closer when Hayabusa2 sets off for home, thanks to their orbit paths.

With the latest landing, Hayabusa2 has completed the key tasks of its complex mission. It will continue to take images and readings while it remains around Ryugu but it is expected to head back to Earth next year.

In a 2017 paper, project director Tsuda and another JAXA colleague wrote that Hayabusa2 might be able to carry out another asteroid fly-by after dropping off its re-entry capsule to Earth.

For the past six years, Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft has conducted a remarkable 5.2bn km mission to extract the first-ever sub-surface samples from the asteroid Ryugu, which scientists hope will shed light on the origins of life.

“It was great ... It was a beautiful fireball, and I was so impressed,” said Hayabusa2 project manager Yuichi Tsuda from a command centre in Sagamihara, near Tokyo.

After it released the capsule, Hayabusa2 moved away from Earth to capture images of the capsule descending toward the planet as it set off on a new expedition to another distant asteroid. Its next mission will take a decade.In Woomera, collection work began at 6:23 JST at the re-entry capsule landing site.— HAYABUSA2@JAXA (@haya2e_jaxa) December 5, 2020

In Canberra, Deep Space Communication Network director Ed Kruzins has been helping track Hayabusa2 since its launch in 2014. He said the mission was now in its most exciting phase.

Hayabusa2’s return comes weeks after Nasa’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft made a successful touch-and-go grab of surface samples from the asteroid Bennu. China, meanwhile, announced this week that its lunar lander collected underground samples and sealed them within the spacecraft for their return to Earth, as developing nations compete in their space missions.

Jaxa hopes to find clues to how the materials are distributed in the solar system and are related to life on Earth. Makoto Yoshikawa, the mission manager, said 0.1 gram of the dust would be enough to carry out all planned research.

It is not the end of the mission Hayabusa2 started in 2014. It is now heading to a small asteroid called 1998KY26 on a journey slated to take 10 years one way, for possible research including finding ways to prevent meteorites from hitting Earth.

So far, its mission has been successful. Hayabusa2 touched down twice on Ryugu despite the asteroid’s extremely rocky surface and successfully collected data and samples during the one-and-a-half years it spent near Ryugu after it arrived there in June 2018.

During Hayabusa2’s first touchdown in February 2019, it collected surface dust samples. In a more challenging mission in July that year, it collected underground samples from the asteroid for the first time in space history after landing in a crater that it created earlier by blasting the asteroid’s surface.