EXPERT REACTION: Hayabusa2 capsule full of space-rocks successfully lands in the outback

The Japanese Space Exploration Agency can rightly celebrate an amazing success. The landing and retrieval of the sample capsule marks the end of one mission and the beginning of another.

The Hayabusa2 mothership will continue on its voyage of discovery, embarking on an 11-year odyssey to visit at least two more asteroids, and potentially catch glimpses of exoplanets orbiting distant stars.

While this is a great achievement by the Japanese space agency, Australia can also be proud of the important role it has played in the mission’s success.

To get to asteroid Ryugu and return home safely, Hayabusa2 was able to use the navigation, command, control and telemetry services provided by NASA’s Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex and the European Space Agency’s New Norcia station, both managed by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency.

We have been working alongside our Japanese partners since the mission launched in 2014. We received the signals when Hayabusa2 made its historic touchdown on asteroid Ryugu in 2019. We are here today with our scientists, institutions and facilities as the samples are returned to Earth to reveal their secrets. 
 
The future looks bright as Australia and Japan continue to work together to explore new worlds.

As the CSIRO Director of the NASA Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, we are honoured to have been given the opportunity to provide space tracking services from Australia to the Hyabusa 2 mission. We have provided this consistently over the last 6 years since launch from Japan, downlinking data from asteroid Ryugu and providing navigation information of Hyabusa2. 

As part of the CSIRO managed NASA Deep Space Network, we are currently supporting our DSN and Japanese colleagues at the Usuda and Uchinoura space tracking facilities in Japan from Canberra, for this momentous event. As the re-entry capsule separated from mothership Hyabusa2, with precious cargo from asteroid Ryugu, Canberra continued to track the mothership as it passed by Earth on its next asteroid encounter. We at CSIRO, congratulate JAXA and are honoured to have played our supporting part in this historic mission.

The Hyabusa 2 landing is a marvellous example of how the scientific and technical co-operation between nations has been further strengthened by the recent formation of the Australian Space Agency. 

The Japanese Space Agency JAXA and their partner agencies should be congratulated on delivering an important and technically challenging mission to return samples of pristine rock from beneath the surface of a primordial near-Earth asteroid. The samples will help planetary scientists to better understand the composition and motion of materials such as water and biological molecules in the solar nebula, which birthed our planet almost 4.6 billion years ago.

This weekend sees one of the most thrilling events of the year for Australian space-watchers, with the landing of JAXA’s Hayabusa2 Sample Capsule in the Woomera Prohibited Area. Containing both surface and sub-surface samples from near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu, the capsule represents a potential milestone in our understanding of the Solar System’s history. And perhaps also in our understanding of the origin of life on Earth, since complex organic molecules are likely to be among its precious cargo.

While the scientific outcomes from this unique Japanese-Australian collaboration will be far-reaching, the details of the recovery are equally inspiring. Curtin University’s highly-productive Desert Fireball Network played a role, its cameras seeking the fiery descent of the capsule to help pinpoint the landing site as quickly as possible. A radio beacon in the capsule, as well as its radar-reflective parachute deployed at 10km altitude, will also facilitate the recovery.

And the landing is not be the end of the Hayabusa2 story. The spacecraft itself has enough xenon fuel left in its electric propulsion system to visit two further asteroids of interest – in 2026 and 2031. Watch this space!

The Hayabusa 2 Ryugu sample return to Earth, via a capsule that was released as the spacecraft passed us as it continues its mission, is a unique event. The capsule landed near Woomera, South Australia, with a trajectory from the north-west. Thus, observations of the re-entry provided valuable information on the landing location and the mission in general. 

My team at Curtin University are part of the Hayabusa 2 astrodynamics team and we are working with colleagues from the Japanese National Astronomical Observatory to observe the capsule re-entry using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope in Western Australia.  We used a technique called passive radar, where transmissions from FM broadcast towers reflect off the capsule and are received by the MWA.  This provided data on the location, speed, and trajectory of the capsule, on its way to Woomera.

I'm really excited to see Hayabusa 2 return samples of Ryugu - it's an amazing achievement, and the second time the Japanese have managed to travel to nearby asteroids, gather samples, and bring them back home. I can't understate how incredible that is - they've brought home pristine pieces of an object that will help to reveal the fine details of the Solar system’s formation, 4.5 billion years ago. At the same time, they've helped to lay the groundwork for the extraction of resources from those objects (off-Earth mining), and even for our ability to deflect threatening objects that could otherwise collide with the Earth.

When I was a kid, we’d only ever brought back samples from one celestial object – the Moon. In the past decade, the Japanese Hayabusa missions have tripled the number of places from which we’ve brought back samples. I’m fascinated to see what the samples will tell us about the Solar system’s past, and to see whether they offer any insights into how the Earth became the habitable world we know and love.

The sample-return is a fantastic technological achievement, and I can’t wait to see the results of the great science that comes next!

After over 5 billion kilometres, the astronomical world held its breath for the last few hundred kilometre, as the precious cargo of a distant asteroid plunged in a fireball towards the red dirt of Woomera, South Australia.

After successfully deploying its parachute for the last 10 km it safely landed and the search team via helicopter quickly identified and recovered the capsule, measuring just 40cm in diameter.

The pinch worth of an asteroid inside the capsule may tell us how key ingredients for life on Earth arrived and whether asteroids like this Ryugu were responsible for bringing it to our planet over the course of 4 billion years.

The mission is a triumph for Japan’s Space Agency JAXA, but it has also allowed Australia to shine on the world-stage as a trusted partner in space.
 
For Hayabusa2 itself though, the mission continues! Even as the asteroid sample is recovered from Australia, the mothership is already on its way to explore another asteroid 1998KY26..!

This is an exciting mission that highlights Australia’s growing role in space.  Getting samples back from Ryugu will give us clues to the formation to the Solar System.  Moreover, future space travel will need to be able to extract resources in space.  Missions like Hayabusa-2 are laying the groundwork for it.
 
Sample-return missions are now becoming a regular thing. Technology has allowed us to regularly land on objects and return back to Earth. With China’s Chang’e 5 landing on the Moon and returning in late December, Osiris-Rex, and future missions planned, we’ll be able to get our hands dirty and learn a lot about the Solar System and our own Earth.  What seemed like a distant dream years ago, our exploration in space is now becoming a reality.

The return of Hayabusa 2 to a landing site near Woomera represents another important milestone in Australia’s international engagement to promote and actively participate in the exploration and use of space for peaceful purposes. Our national legislative framework is designed to accommodate such missions, as had already been demonstrated by the successful return of Hayabusa 1 in 2010, and this latest mission is another in a long line of cooperative space activities involving Australia stemming all the way back to the 1950s.

The significance of the Hayabusa 2 mission will be more fully understood when an analysis is undertaken of the samples brought back from the Ryugu asteroid, but it is clear that we need to gain a greater appreciation of the space environment and of celestial bodies to further science, exploration and industry for the benefit of all humanity. Ultimately, this calls for broad, inclusive and open multilateral discussions – also incorporating the views of all stakeholders – on the appropriate way forward, so as to ensure that we continue to embark on future missions that preserve the safety, security and sustainability of space for present and future generations.