Hayabusa-2’s samples return to Earth

The Japanese space agency, JAXA, successfully recovers the Hayabusa-2 space probe’s sample return container after its return to Earth in Austrailia. The container’s precious cargo is 100 milligrams of surface and subsurface material retrieved by Hayabusa-2 from the surface of asteroid 162173 Ryugu during a series of touch-and-go maneuvers performed between February and July of 2019. Though it drops its samples off during a close flyby of Earth, Hayabusa-2 remains in space, where JAXA hopes to redirect it to study further asteroids, though the probe will no longer have the ability to gather or return samples.