ADELAIDE, Australia — A fiery burst of light over the Australian Outback late Sunday marked the return of a Japanese space probe that scientists hope carried samples from an asteroid that could offer insights into the creation and makeup of the solar system.
After traveling 4 billion miles in seven years, the Hayabusa explorer incinerated on re-entry after jettisoning a capsule expected to contain the first asteroid dust ever collected, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.
The capsule parachuted to Earth within the Woomera Prohibited Area, a remote military zone 300 miles northwest of the South Australian state capital of Adelaide. Scientists will retrieve the capsule in the daylight today, and it will then be sealed in an airtight vessel and taken to Japan for study.
Hayabusa, the $200 million project launched in 2003, landed on the asteroid in 2005 and is thought to have collected samples of material from the surface that might shed light on the solar system’s origin and evolution.
Scientists hope to study how and when the asteroid was formed, its physical properties, what other bodies it might have been in contact with and how solar wind and radiation have affected it.
If Hayabusa is indeed carrying asteroid samples, it would be only the fourth space-sample return in history — including moon matter collected by the Apollo missions, comet material by Stardust and solar matter from the Genesis mission.
Preliminary analysis of the samples will be carried out by a team of Japanese, American and Australian scientists in Japan. After one year, scientists around the world can apply for access to the asteroid material for research.
