After a 6year mission, asteroid samples arrive
TOKYO — Japanese space agency officials were delighted Tuesday by the return of a small capsule containing asteroid soil samples obtained by their Hayabusa2 spacecraft and were anxiously waiting to look inside after preparations are complete.
Hayabusa2 dropped the capsule from space and it landed as planned in the Australian Outback over the weekend. It arrived in Japan on Tuesday and will be studied for insights into the origins of the solar system and life on Earth.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said the capsule, tightly sealed and carefully stored in a container box, arrived at its research facility in Sagamihara, near Tokyo, for analysis.
“It’s really like a dream,” said Yuichi Tsuda, the Hayabusa2 project manager. “After 5.2 billion kilometers ( 3.2 billion miles) of space journey which took six years, ( the capsule) has returned and now it’s here with us.”
Mission officials will have to wait until next week to look inside.
“I’m anxious to find out if the samples are really inside and how much is there,” mission manager Makoto Yoshikawa said.
At the end of its yearlong journey from asteroid Ryugu, more than 190 million miles from Earth, Hayabusa2 released the capsule Saturday from 136,700 miles in space, successfully sending it to land in a targeted area in a sparsely populated desert in Australia.
The extremely high precision work at the end of Hayabusa2’ s sixyear mission thrilled many Japanese.
Launched in December 2014, the unmanned Hayabusa2 spacecraft touched down twice last year on the asteroid. Despite an unexpectedly rocky surface that forced the mission team to revise landing plans, the spacecraft successfully collected data and soil samples from two locations — on the surface and from underground.
Scientists say the samples taken from under the asteroid’s surface are likely to contain data from 4.6 billion years ago unaffected by space radiation and other environmental factors. They are particularly interested in studying organic materials in the samples to learn about how they were distributed in the solar system and if they are related to life on Earth.
Usui said depending on the amount of the samples, priorities in research will be placed on an analysis of minerals, the variety of organic materials and their structures, and a chronology of the samples.