Scientists in Australia’s vast outback on Monday recovered a capsule that they hope contains the first piece of asteroid ever brought to earth, perhaps offering a glimpse into ancient space history.
The pod was ejected from a Japanese space probe as the host vessel burned up in a spectacular display over Australia following a seven-year odyssey across the solar system to the far-off Itokawa asteroid. It lay in the desert dust overnight before scientists were given the go-ahead to retrieve it after Aboriginal elders deemed it had not landed in any indigenous sacred sites.
“The capsule is deemed intact at the moment,” the Japanese space agency JAXA said in a statement.
The heat-resistant capsule parachuted into South Australia’s remote Woomera military zone after being released from the Hayabusa spacecraft, which flamed back into the planet’s atmosphere late on Sunday.
The director of Woomera test range, Doug Gerrie, said the probe had completed a textbook landing in the South Australian desert and had avoided any sensitive sites. “They (JAXA) landed it exactly where they nominated they would,” he said.
The Hayabusa has endured a series of technical mishaps over its five-billion-kilometre journey to the ancient Itokawa asteroid.
Fears for the return journey kept watching scientists anxious and Yoshiyuki Hasegawa, JAXA’s associate executive director, said when they knew the capsule had made a better-than-expected soft landing, “we were very happy”.