A Japanese spacecraft is about to send a “ treasure box ” of asteroid dust plunging to Earth. Watch the sample return live.

• Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa-2 is expected to deliver a rock and dust sample from asteroid Ryugu on Saturday.

• Hayabusa-2 detonated the asteroid with a bullet in 2019. The “treasure box” she brings back contains the world’s first sample below the surface of an asteroid.

• Studying this space rock may reveal new information about the evolution of the solar system and the origins of life on Earth.

• Watch live coverage of the comeback below from 12 p.m. ET on Saturday.

• Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.

A Japanese spacecraft is about to return from its asteroid explosion mission on Saturday. In a dramatic finale, the Hayabusa-2 spacecraft is expected to send at least 100 milligrams of alien space rock plunging into the Australian outback.

The sample comes from the asteroid Ryugu: a primitive rock half a mile wide that traverses our solar system up to 131 million miles (211 million kilometers) from the sun. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched Hayabusa-2 in 2014 with the aim of collecting the first sample of material below the surface of an asteroid.

The spacecraft first landed on Ryugu in February to collect shallow surface samples. But scientists knew that deeper probes could reveal purer rocks from the early days of our solar system because this material was not exposed to the strong radiation from the sun.

So in April 2019, Hayabusa-2 detonated a 33-foot crater in the asteroid using a copper plate and a box of explosives. This loosened rocks and exposed material below the surface. Three months later, in July 2019, the probe again lowered over Ryugu and picked up the debris.

Now, the spacecraft has almost completed the 9 million kilometer (5.5 million mile) return trip.

Between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. ET on Saturday, the spacecraft will launch a capsule containing the samples back to Earth.

A brilliant fireball will fly across the sky as the “treasure box,” as JAXA calls it, tumbles through the atmosphere at 7.5 miles per second. At about 6 miles above the ground, the capsule is expected to deploy parachutes and drift towards the desert floor of Woomera, Australia. Then it will send a beacon to lead the JAXA Recovery Team to its location.

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Hayabusa-2, meanwhile, will embark on an extended 11-year mission to encounter another asteroid, called 1998 KY26.

“ Clues to the origin of life on Earth ”

Asteroids built up from the leftover crumbs of our early solar system 4.5 billion years ago. The materials that did not reach the planets have merged. So what scientists find in these primitive space rocks can tell a lot about the history of the solar system.

Additionally, Ryugu is a Type C asteroid, which means that it is rich in organic carbon molecules, water, and possibly amino acids – the building blocks of proteins essential for the evolution of life on Earth. . Some theories postulate that an asteroid first delivered amino acids to our planet.

“Organic materials are the source of life on Earth, but we still don’t know where they came from,” Makoto Yoshikawa, project manager for the Hayabusa2 project, said Friday in a briefing, according to The Guardian. . “We hope to find clues to the origin of life on Earth by analyzing the details of the organic material reported by Hayabusa2.”

NASA and JAXA each report asteroid samples for sharing

NASA sent its own spacecraft to an asteroid this year: Osiris-Rex (short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer). On October 20, the spacecraft’s asteroid Bennu landed on its surface for just six seconds to stir up dust. During this brief landing he collected a whopping 2 pounds of sample.

This spaceship will not return with its bounty until 2023.

But combined, the samples from Osiris-Rex and Hyabusa-2 will provide the world’s first complete set of pristine asteroid material. NASA and JAXA have agreed to share pieces of their samples for scientific study.

Parts of the asteroid samples from the two agencies will also be stored for future research.

“These samples returned by Bennu will also allow future planetary scientists to ask questions that we cannot even think about today and to be able to use analytical techniques that are not even invented yet”, Lori Glaze, director of the NASA’s Planetary Science Division said in a briefing after Osiris-Rex collected his samples.

Watch JAXA’s live coverage of its first asteroid sample return, starting at 12 p.m. ET Saturday

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