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TOKYO – Japan’s space agency successfully recovered a capsule of asteroid dust dropped by the Hayabusa 2 space probe on Sunday, hoping it would give clues to how life began on Earth.
The recovery in the Australian outback was the latest feat in a competition between the world’s leading scientific powers, including the United States and China, to bring back samples of extraterrestrial bodies. Along with scientific research, one of the goals is to find out what kinds of places might one day be suitable for mineral extraction.
On December 1, China said it landed a probe on the moon in humanity’s first attempt since the 1970s to return lunar rocks to Earth. The United States has its own asteroid mission that recently captured up to 2 pounds of material from the asteroid Bennu, and the return to Earth is scheduled for 2023.
The Japanese probe Hayabusa 2 took off six years ago on its journey to Ryugu, a square mini-planet about half a mile in diameter that revolves around the sun primarily between the orbits of Earth and Mars. Last year, the probe collected two samples of the asteroid, including one below the surface after firing a projectile to create an artificial crater.
Hayabusa 2 flew over Earth this weekend and launched a capsule that Japanese officials hope will contain at least 0.1 gram of asteroid material, the equivalent of a few grains of rice. The capsule passed through Earth’s atmosphere at 7 miles per second before extending a parachute that allowed it to glide to a landing site in Australia on Sunday morning local time.
