The spacecraft Hayabusa2 released the small capsule on Saturday and sent it toward Earth to deliver samples from a distant asteroid. At about 10 kilometers above ground, a parachute was opened to slow its fall and beacon signals were transmitted to indicate its location in the sparsely populated area of Woomera in southern Australia.
About two hours after the reentry, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said its helicopter search team found the capsule in the planned landing area. The retrieval of the pan-shaped capsule, about 40 centimeters in diameter, was completed after another two hours.
“The capsule collection work at the landing site was completed," the agency said in a tweet. "We practiced a lot for today ... it ended safe."
The return of the capsule with the world’s first asteroid subsurface samples comes weeks after NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made a successful touch-and-go grab of surface samples from asteroid Bennu. China, meanwhile, announced this week its lunar lander collected underground samples and sealed them within the spacecraft for return to Earth, as space developing nations compete in their missions.
Hayabusa2 left the asteroid Ryugu, about 300 million kilometers away, a year ago. After it released the capsule, it moved away from Earth to capture images of the capsule descending toward the planet as it set off on a new expedition to another distant asteroid.
The capsule descended from 220,000 kilometers away after it was separated from Hayabusa2 in a challenging operation that required precision control. JAXA officials said they hoped to conduct a preliminary safety inspection at an Australian lab and bring the capsule back to Japan early next week.
A panel of experts at Japan's health ministry has pointed out that the number of new cases of the coronavirus in the country has been declining at a slower pace since mid-February.
(NHK)
NAGOYA – Toyota Motor Corp. on Tuesday began construction of a smart city at the foot of Mount Fuji in central Japan as a testing ground for new technologies including robotics and artificial intelligence.
(Japan Times)
Since last year, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. (Tepco) left two broken seismometers unrepaired at the No. 3 reactor within its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, officials said Monday.
(Japan Times)
Japan has received its second shipment of the coronavirus vaccine developed by US pharmaceutical company Pfizer.
(NHK)
Tokyo Electric Power Company has found that the pressure inside one of the reactor containment vessels at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has dropped.
(NHK)
NHK has learned that a capsule used to bring back asteroid samples to Earth will be on display in March at a museum in Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo.
(NHK)
Japan's health ministry has decided to require patients with serious cases of COVID-19 to remain hospitalized for at least 15 days after they start showing symptoms.
(NHK)
Japan has begun vaccinating healthcare workers at medical facilities across the country.
(NHK)
Japanese companies are moving to expand the country's still-nascent hydrogen fueling infrastructure, taking advantage of recent deregulation as Tokyo positions the fuel as central to its pivot away from carbon. (Nikkei)
Vaccinations that kicked off Wednesday in Japan are administered through intramuscular injection — the delivery of medication deep into the muscles — which is widespread in Western countries but not so in Japan.
(Japan Times)
The number of patients with seasonal flu in Japan was below 100 during the first seven days of February. That's far below the levels seen before. (NHK)
A magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck northeastern Japan at around 11:07 p.m. on Saturday, local time. No tsunami warning has been issued.
(NHK)
Japanese localities have begun a scramble to secure medical personal to carry out a mass vaccination campaign against the coronavirus slated to start next week, with estimates predicting that 11,000 physicians are needed per day nationwide.
(Nikkei)
Japan is unlikely to inoculate as many people with Pfizer Inc.'s COVID-19 vaccine as planned due to a shortage of special syringes capable of extracting the final dose from vials provided by the drugmaker, health minister Norihisa Tamura said Tuesday.
(Kyodo)
Japanese precision equipment maker Shimadzu Corp started selling on Monday test kits that can detect coronavirus on inanimate surfaces, including doorknobs, faucets and computers, for the first time in the world.
(Japan Today)
Japanese researchers believe that a jawbone fossil discovered in Fukui Prefecture in 2019 might be from the earliest mammal to ever live within its shores.
(NHK)
Doctors have warned that many coronavirus patients, especially younger ones, are suffering aftereffects for a long time despite subsequently testing negative for the virus and are calling on the government to take countermeasures.
(Kyodo)
The European Union has approved exports of novel coronavirus vaccines to Japan for the first time, EU sources said Friday.
(Japan Times)
A Japanese health ministry survey shows that less than one percent of people in Tokyo and four other prefectures are estimated to have had antibodies against the coronavirus last December.
(NHK)
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, takes us over the algal blooms swirling around the Pacific Ocean, just off the coast of Japan, in this edition of the Earth from Space programme.
(European Space Agency, ESA)