Sydney, Australia (CWBN)_ Following a six year mission, a probe launched by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), dubbed Hayabusa2 returned to Earth at 2:30am (JST) today (6th Dec), carrying a 0.1 gram sample from the Ryugu asteroid.
The sample touched down safely in a desert in the Woomera in southern Australia, where JAXA were ready to retrieve it.
It is expected that the sample would provide some input toward the origin of life on earth and the formation of the solar system. NASA, JAXA and other agencies will be claiming one half of the sample for investigations while the remainder would be kept in storage for future analysis.
It was reported that the 4.6 billion year old sample has remained unchanged since the origins of the solar system and that the probe was required to travel about 300 million kilometres to from Earth to claim it. The overall distance travelled by the probe was recorded above 500 million kilometres.
