Posted for David Cyranoski

Last night, Japan’s Hayabusa finished its dramatic 7-year trip to an asteroid with a suitably stunning, shooting star like disintegration as it entered the Earth’s atmosphere (see picture below). Before turning into a fireball (at 22:51 Japan time on 13 June), it released its recovery capsule (at 19:51 pm Japan time) which, with the help of a heat shield, withstood 2700 C heat and parachuted safely into Australia Woomera Protected Area. The flight was also caught on video by NASA.

The capsule’s radio beacon signaled its location, and an hour later helicopters buzzed down to verify its location (see below). JAXA recovered the capsule at 16:08 Japan time today, and it seems to be undamaged, the agency says.

Later this week the capsule will be returned to Japan and its contents examined (see our news story about how this will work)

Japanese news coverage is proudly touting the mission as a “crystallization” of Japan’s space program that puts it, at least in certain areas of space science and technology, at the forefront. The trip to the Itokawa asteroid, a distance of 300 million kilometers, was the first round trip to a planetary body beyond the Moon. Altogether Hayabusa travelled 6 billion kilometers. The mission pushed ion thruster engines further than they’ve been pushed before, too. Despite technical problems, the ion engines were able to guide the craft in its last round of orbital corrections before coming back to Earth.

The ion engines propel the craft by expulsion of accelerated ionized gas (xenon). While providing less powerful thrust than conventional chemical combustion, the ion engines are durable and efficient. The efficiency helped JAXA cut mission costs. The whole mission, including launch, cost JPY21 billion (US$2230 million), just over half the JPY40 billion that Japan puts into the International Space Station every year.