S cientists had high hopes for the sample of asteroid Ryugu collected by the Japanese Hayabusa-2 probe. The actual findings ...

See multiple views from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft's touching down on asteroid 162173 Ryugu. Credit: JAXA/U. Tokyo/Kochi ...

The final flight of Japan’s H-IIA rocket took place on Saturday, carrying the GOSAT-GW environmental research satellite to ...

Unlocking the origins of life starts with understanding how simple space molecules turned into complex building blocks. To do ...

JAXA's Hayabusa-2 Mission intends to discover more of the Ryugu, focusing on gathering more samples and collecting more information about the space rock. The asteroid is near Mars in between the ...

Dr Yuichi Tsuda, Hayabusa-2 project manager at Jaxa, told a press conference: "We have confirmed that the capsule contains a considerable amount of [material] collected from Ryugu.

Half the Hayabusa-2's samples will be shared between JAXA, US space agency NASA and other international organisations, and the rest kept for future study as advances are made in analytic technology.

Then it will send out a beacon to lead JAXA's retrieval team to its location. Hayabusa-2, meanwhile, will embark on an 11-year extended mission to rendezvous with another asteroid, called 1998 KY26.

Ryugu seen by Hayabusa 2. JAXA/Hayabusa 2, CC BY-SA Ryugu could tell us a lot about the Solar System’s history.

Hayabusa-2 was officially launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on Dec. 3, 2014. It reached the asteroid, which measures about 3,280 feet wide, on June 27, 2018, after ...