On Thursday night, a Japanese spacecraft will try to fire a bullet at a giant rock in space. If it succeeds, it could help advance understanding of how our planet formed in the early solar system. In ...

On December 6, 2020, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft dropped off pristine samples from asteroid Ryugu in the Australian outback, becoming the world’s second asteroid sample return mission, after the first ...

TOKYO — Japan's Hayabusa2 probe made a "perfect" touchdown on Thursday on a distant asteroid, collecting samples from beneath the surface in an unprecedented mission that could shed light on the ...

Hayabusa2 was launched in 2014 to collect samples from Ryugu, an asteroid that orbits the sun between Earth and Mars and has a diameter of just more than a half mile. By returning to Earth next year ...

The Japanese asteroid sample return mission Hayabusa 2, which launched in December 2014, is pulling up to its target this week, the asteroid Ryugu. The asteroid, about a half-mile (900 meters) across, ...

TOKYO — A Japanese space probe on Friday released a pair of exploring rovers towards an egg-shaped asteroid to collect mineral samples that may shed light on the origin of the solar system. The ...

An unmanned Japanese spacecraft orbiting an asteroid has made surprising discoveries that scientists say will improve understanding about the origin’s of the Earth’s water and help search for life in ...