Asteroids traversing our solar system offer researchers a unique window into the past.
In 2014, Japan launched the Hayabusa2 probe on a 300 million kilometer journey to land on Ryugu, a 900 meter wide asteroid. The mission represents a significant step in our ability to study the building blocks of the solar system and understand its origins.
The spacecraft succeeded. Two small samples, each weighing 5.4 grams, were brought back to Earth in December 2020. This sample-return mission is a follow-up to the earlier Hayabusa mission, which first demonstrated the feasibility of asteroid sample retrieval in 2010.
Ryugu appears as a massive, gravel-like cube with rounded corners – but appearances can be deceiving. The asteroid is one of the oldest time capsules known to science, offering a glimpse into the early solar system’s composition.
Now, in 2026, the samples are finally being analyzed – and the results are proving more remarkable than many had anticipated. The analysis is expected to reveal insights into the formation of planets and the potential delivery of organic molecules to Earth.
The Hayabusa2 mission, operated by the Japanese space agency JAXA, initially surveyed Ryugu for a year and a half before departing in November 2019. The spacecraft also deployed a series of landers and a penetrator to gather data from the asteroid’s surface, as detailed in NASA’s mission overview.
