Japan got more than it expected from its asteroid probe

[Mike Wehner]

• Japan revealed more information about what exactly its Hayabusa2 asteroid probe captured during its mission and recently dropped off on Earth.
• The country's space agency, JAXA, says that it got more material than it was hoping for, and offered new images that show more of the asteroid sample that was collected during the mission.
• The asteroid material will now be studied, and there's no telling what interesting things the researchers may find.

See all that dark brown, sandy-looking stuff in the picture above? It's not coffee grounds, believe it or not, but asteroid material that was brought back to Earth by Japan's Hayabusa2 asteroid probe. The spacecraft recently dropped off its payload of asteroid material in Australia, which was then shipped to Japan where eager scientists are waiting to study it.

In a news release a day or two ago, JAXA showed off an image of its sample collection container that showed what appeared to be a very small amount of material. Now, in an updated statement and new image, we can see that there was actually quite a bit more asteroid soil than we initially thought, and JAXA says it's overwhelmed with the success of the mission.

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Japan got more than it expected from its asteroid probe originally appeared on BGR.com on Tue, 15 Dec 2020 at 23:16:53 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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