Samples of an asteroid 300 million km from Earth arrived in Japan on Tuesday to applause and smiles, the climax of a six-year odyssey by a space probe pursuing the origins of life.
The solar system formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago. Numerous fragments that bear witness to this early era orbit the sun as asteroids. Around three-quarters of these are carbon-rich C-type asteroids, such as 162173 Ryugu, which was the target of the Japanese Hayabusa2 mission in 2018 and 2019.
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A Japanese spacecraft left a distant asteroid on Wednesday, starting its yearlong journey home after successfully completing its mission to gather soil samples and data that could provide clues to the origins of the solar system, the country’s space agency said.
Japan’s Hayabusa 2 probe has made its presence known on Ryugu since entering orbit around the asteroid in June 2018, deploying a pair of bouncing robots and touching down on its surface not once, but two times.
Second successful excursion for JAXA boffins
The space probe Hayabusa2 successfully touched down for the second time on the asteroid Ryugu, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said Thursday, adding that it believes subsurface samples have been collected for the first-ever time.
Scientists hope samples from Hayabusa 2 will provide clues about origins of life on Earth
The Hayabusa2’s target – the asteroid named Ryugu – is thought to be as old as the solar system itself.
