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The Japanese space agency said its helicopter search team on Sunday recovered a capsule containing asteroid samples after it successfully landed in a remote area in South Australia as planned.
The Hayabusa2 spacecraft dropped the small capsule on Saturday and sent it toward Earth to deliver samples from a distant asteroid that could provide clues to the origin of the solar system and life on our planet, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.
“The capsule collection work at the landing site was completed,” the agency said in a tweet about four hours after the capsule landed. “We practiced a lot for today … it ended for sure.
The return of the capsule with the world’s first asteroid subsurface samples comes weeks after NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully sampled the surface of the asteroid Bennu. Meanwhile, China announced this week that its lunar lander collected samples underground and sealed them inside the spacecraft to return to Earth, while space developing nations compete on their missions.
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Early Sunday, the capsule briefly turned into a fireball as it reentered the atmosphere 75 miles above Earth. Approximately 10 km above the ground, a parachute was opened to slow its fall and beacon signals were transmitted to indicate its location.
JAXA / AP
This image released by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) shows the asteroid Ryugu taken by the Japanese Hayabusa2 spacecraft.
“It was great … It was a beautiful ball of fire, and I was very impressed,” said JAXA Hayabusa2 project manager Yuichi Tsuda as he celebrated the successful return of the capsule and safe landing from a command center in Sagamihara, near Tokyo. “I have waited for this day for six years.”
Beacon signals were detected, suggesting that the parachute was successfully opened and the capsule landed safely in a remote and sparsely populated area of Woomera, Australia, JAXA official Akitaka Kishi said.
About two hours after the capsule’s re-entry, JAXA said its helicopter search team found the capsule at the planned landing area. Recovery of the dish-shaped capsule, about 40 centimeters in diameter, was completed about two hours later.
The fireball could be seen even from the International Space Station. A Japanese astronaut, Soichi Noguchi, who is now on a six-month mission there, tweeted: “I just saw # hayabusa2 from #ISS! Unfortunately, it’s not bright enough for a handheld camera, but I did enjoy looking at the capsule! ”
Hayabusa2 left the asteroid Ryugu, some 300 million kilometers away, a year ago. After he released the capsule, he moved away from Earth to capture images of the capsule descending towards the planet as he embarked on a new expedition to another distant asteroid.
The capsule descended from 220,000 km away after it separated from Hayabusa2 in a challenging operation that required precision control. JAXA officials said they expected to conduct a preliminary safety inspection at an Australian laboratory and bring the capsule back to Japan early next week.
Dozens of JAXA employees have been working on Woomera to prepare for the sample return. They installed satellite dishes at various locations in the target area within the Australian Air Force test range to receive the signals.
JAXA / AP
JAXA members react at the command center in Sagamihara, west of Tokyo, after JAXA officials confirmed the successful separation of a capsule from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft.
Trevor Ireland, a space rock expert at the Australian National University, who was in Woomera for the capsule’s arrival, said he expected the Ryugu samples to be similar to the meteorite that fell in Australia near Murchison in the state of Victoria ago. more than 50 years.
“The Murchison meteorite opened a window on the origin of organic compounds on Earth because these rocks were found to contain simple amino acids and plenty of water,” Ireland said. “We will examine whether Ryugu is a potential source of organic matter and water on Earth when the solar system was forming, and whether they still remain intact on the asteroid.”
Scientists say they believe the samples, especially those taken below the asteroid’s surface, contain valuable data that is unaffected by space radiation and other environmental factors. They are particularly interested in analyzing organic materials in samples.
JAXA hopes to find clues about how materials are distributed in the solar system and how they relate to life on Earth. Yoshikawa, the mission director, said 0.1 grams of powder would be enough to carry out all the planned investigations.
For Hayabusa2, it is not the end of the mission that began in 2014. It is now heading to a small asteroid named 1998KY26 on a journey scheduled to take 10 years one-way, for possible investigation, including finding ways to prevent it from meteorites hit Earth.
So far, your mission has been totally successful. It landed twice on Ryugu despite the asteroid’s extremely rocky surface, and successfully collected data and samples during the year and a half it passed near Ryugu after arriving there in June 2018.
On its first landing in February 2019, it collected dust samples from the surface. On a more challenging mission in July of that year, it collected underground samples of the asteroid for the first time in space history after landing in a crater it previously created by blowing up the asteroid’s surface.
Asteroids, which orbit the sun but are much smaller than planets, are among the oldest objects in the solar system and can therefore help explain how Earth evolved.
Ryugu in Japanese means “Dragon Palace”, the name of a castle at the bottom of the sea in a Japanese folk tale.
Associated Press journalist Dennis Passa in Brisbane, Australia, contributed to this report.
