Samples obtained from a remote asteroid came to Earth on Sunday in a streak of light through the night sky after being dropped by the Japanese space probe Hayabusa2.
Scientists hope that the precious samples, which are supposed to be no more than 0.1 grams of material, will help to shed light on the nature of life and the creation of the universe.
The capsule containing the samples had reached the atmosphere shortly before 2:30 a.m. Japan time, producing a fireball-like star-like fireball as it reached Earth's atmosphere.
"Six years and it has finally come back to Earth," an official narrating a live broadcast of the arrival said, as images showed personnel from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency cheering and pumping their fists in excitement.
A few hours later, JAXA announced that the samples had been retrieved, with the aid of beacons released by the capsule, which had plunged to Earth after splitting from Hayabusa2 on Saturday, when the refrigerator-sized probe was about 220,000 kilometers away.
People who had assembled at a public viewing spot outside JAXA's office in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, in Japan, despite the incident that took place a few hours after midnight-also erupted with cheers.
The capsule was found in the Southern Australian desert and is now being processed before being returned to Japan. The samples were obtained from the asteroid Ryugu, about 300 million km from Earth, by Hayabusa2, which launched in 2014.
The probe gathered all surface dust and pristine material from below the surface that was stirred by launching an "impactor" into the asteroid. The substance obtained from the asteroid is thought to have remained unchanged since the time the universe was formed.
Larger planetary bodies like Earth have undergone dramatic changes, including heating and solidifying, altering the structure of the elements on their surface and below. But when it comes to smaller planets or smaller asteroids, these substances have not been melted, and therefore it is believed that substances from 4.6 billion years ago are still there," Mission Manager Makoto Yoshikawa told reporters before the capsule arrived.
Half of the samples from Hayabusa2 will be shared by JAXA, the U.S. space agency NASA and other foreign agencies, and the remainder will be held for future research while improvements in analytical science are made.
The job is not finished for Hayabusa2, which is now starting an expanded mission targeting two new asteroids. It will complete a sequence of orbits around the sun for around six years before encountering the first of its target asteroids-named 2001 CC21-in July 2026.
