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...
March 2016
Rosetta – Starting from Scratch
... idea was even more ambitious: to land on the surface, collect a material sample and bring it back to Earth. However, early studies showed that a comet sample return mission would be too expensive, too risky and inefficient in terms of scientific...
October 2020
Connecting the global space community
... fascinating neighbour, and the Mars2020 mission will collect material for a future Mars sample return mission. Meanwhile, JAXA’s Hayabusa mission will return samples from near-Earth asteroids (at the end of 2020), so next year we might have some...
27 June 2018
Hayabusa2 reaches Ryugu after a 42 month journey
Hayabusa2, Japan’s asteroid sample return mission has successfully settled into an observation... surface and expose fresh material within the excavated crater. Samples will then be collected and returned to Earth for further testing by the end of 2020...
16 January 2019
China unveils future space plans
...’e 5 at the end of this year. Chang’e 5 is a Moon-rock sample return mission whose goal is to land in the Mons Rumker region of Oceanus Procellarum, and return a 2 kilogram sample of lunar regolith, possibly from as deep as 2 metres. It is reported...
