January 2020
Small body missions unveil interplanetary secrets
... acquired by the Earth. Artist’s illustration of first touchdown at asteroid Ryugu. The Hayabusa 2 asteroid sample return mission will return samples of carbonaceous chondrites, allowing us to study how these materials formed in space, and how and...
02 October 2018
New technique could provide fresh insights into how the Moon was formed
... Moon were filled with fresh, young rocks, but the samples returned by the Apollo astronauts showed that they are in fact...a common green mineral – olivine – found in the Moon rock samples to study them in greater detail than ever before. Olivine in ...
22 September 2017
OSIRIS-REx makes closest Earth approach today
Today, NASA’s asteroid sample return mission, OSIRIS-REx, will whizz round the Earth and use our planet’s gravity like a slingshot to ...
22 February 2019
Success for Hayabusa2 as it touches down on Ryugu
Mission control at JAXA had good cause to celebrate last night as their sample-return spacecraft, Hayabusa2, successfully touched down on an ancient asteroid 300 million kilometres from Earth to then fire a metal ...
06 December 2020
Hayabusa2 capsule containing asteroid samples lands on Earth
... Associate Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen, along with many well wishers around the globe, congratulated JAXA on their sample-return success; "This is an extremely challenging endeavor and we commend and congratulate Japan on being not only the first...
21 February 2020
MMX mission gets green light to land on Phobos
...DLR (Germany) is to design the rover, which could explore the surface of Phobos. In addition to the sampling device and sample return capsule, JAXA’s contributions include a LIDAR laser altimeter, a dust monitor and a mass spectrum analyser, to study...
