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TOKYO (AP) – Japanese space officials said they were excited about the return of a capsule that landed safely in the Australian Outback on Sunday as it carried soil samples from a distant asteroid, and that they were eager to start analyzing the “treasure” within.
The delivery of the capsule by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 completes its six-year sample return mission and opens the door to research to find clues to the origin of the solar system and life on Earth.
“We were able to lay the treasure box” on the sparsely populated Australian desert of Woomera as planned, said Yuichi Tsuda, Hayabusa2 project manager at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, adding that the capsule was in perfect condition. “I can’t wait to open it up and look inside.”
The capsule will be packaged in a container as soon as its preliminary processing in an Australian lab is completed and brought back to Japan this week, Satoru Nakazawa, a deputy director of the project, told a Woomera online press conference.
Hayabusa2 left asteroid Ryugu, about 300 million kilometers (180 million miles) from Earth, a year ago. After releasing the capsule on Saturday, it embarked on a new expedition to another distant asteroid.
Tsuda said the successful completion of his interplanetary round trip by Hayabusa2 was the world’s first and that he hoped to use the expertise gained in future planetary exploration, possibly Japan’s MMX mission to the moons of Mars at from 2024.
Scientists say they believe the samples, especially those taken below the asteroid’s surface, contain valuable data unaffected by space radiation and other environmental factors. They are particularly interested in organic matter in samples to find out how it is distributed in the solar system and related to life on Earth.
“And then the sample will start telling their stories and revealing wonderful signs to us about how water got to our Earth and how we may have even been formed, like our organics, our animals based of carbon, our humans and our plants, ”said Megan Clark, head of the Australian Space Agency, who was also at the press conference.
The capsule’s return with the world’s first asteroid subsurface samples comes weeks after NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully captured surface samples from the asteroid Bennu. China, meanwhile, recently announced that its lunar lander had collected samples from underground and sealed them in the spacecraft for return to Earth, as developing space countries competed for their missions.
JAXA officials said Ryugu’s samples will be processed in clean rooms to avoid any impact on the samples. Initial research is expected within the first six months, and samples will be distributed to NASA and other key international research groups, with around 40% stored for future technological advancements to resolve unanswered questions.
More than 70 JAXA employees worked at Woomera to prepare for the return of samples. They installed satellite dishes at several locations in the target area inside the Australian Air Force test field to receive the signals.
The pan-shaped capsule, approximately 40 centimeters (15 inches) in diameter, was found inside the intended landing zone and recovered by a team of JAXA helicopters.
Hayabusa2 released the capsule on Saturday 220,000 kilometers (136,700 miles) into space, sending it to Earth. About 12 hours after its release, the capsule returned to the atmosphere 120 kilometers (75 miles) from Earth, seen as a fireball crossing the night sky.
For Hayabusa2, this is not the end of the mission. He’s now heading to a small asteroid called 1998KY26 for a journey that will last 11 years one way, for possible planetary defense research, like finding ways to stop meteorites from hitting Earth.
Since its launch on December 3, 2014, the Hayabusa2 mission has been a resounding success. It has landed twice on Ryugu despite the asteroid’s extremely rocky surface, and has successfully collected data and samples during the 1.5 years spent near Ryugu after arriving in June 2018.
When it was first hit in February 2019, it collected surface dust samples. On a more difficult mission in July that year, he collected underground samples of the asteroid for the first time in space history after landing in a crater he had created earlier. by detonating the surface of the asteroid.
Asteroids, which orbit the sun but are much smaller than planets, are some of the oldest objects in the solar system and therefore can help explain how the Earth evolved.
Ryugu in Japanese means “Dragon Palace”, the name of a castle at the bottom of the sea in a Japanese folk tale.
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Associated Press writer Dennis Passa in Brisbane, Australia, contributed to this report.
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