Hayabusa2 returns with a steroid Ryugu sample

Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft arrived on December 6, 2020 safely near Woomera in Australia after collecting samples from the asteroid Ryugu, about 300 million kilometres away.

• Samples of both surface dust and material from below the surface, that was stirred up when the spacecraft had fired two impactors into the asteroid, were collected.

• It had collected the samples in the first half of 2019.

• Hayabusa-2 was launched in 2014.

• Asteroids are essentially leftover building materials from the formation of the Solar System found between Mars and Jupiter. They’re made of the same stuff that went into forming the Earth, but they avoided being incorporated into planets.

• Studying the samples from Ryugu could tell us how water and the ingredients for life were delivered to the early Earth.