Japan just took delivery of asteroid samples from space

[Mike Wehner]

• Japan's asteroid probe spacecraft Hayabusa2 successfully returned its asteroid samples to Earth this past weekend.
• The samples were obtained over a year ago, and the spacecraft had been traveling back to Earth for roughly a year.
• The probe will continue on and is currently headed for another asteroid, and the asteroid samples will be studied in Japan.

Asteroids might seem frightening, but when they're not posing a threat to Earth they're actually incredibly valuable from a scientific perspective. They're made of the same stuff that makes up the planets in our solar system, and as such, they offer the potential to learn about the earliest days of our planet and other rocky worlds like it.

Japan has put a lot of emphasis on the value of asteroids in understanding more about our planet and its stellar neighborhood, and the Hayabusa2 mission is proof of that. The mission, which saw an asteroid probe travel to the space rock known as Ryugu, successfully obtained samples of the asteroid, and then, when it finally wrapped up its time at the rock, it spent another year traveling back to Earth. That incredible trip was completed this weekend, and the probe successfully dropped off its asteroid samples in Australia.

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Japan just took delivery of asteroid samples from space originally appeared on BGR.com on Mon, 7 Dec 2020 at 17:16:52 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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