Capsule with asteroid samples arrives in Japan for research

TOKYO (AP) — 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 300 million kilometers (190 million miles) from Earth, Hayabusa2 released the capsule Saturday from 220,000 kilometers (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 six-year 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...