Researchers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) are raising hopes that they may have dust from an asteroid. At a press conference on Wednesday, they announced that they had “scraped up” a hundred or so new grains—possibly dust from the asteroid, Itokawa—in the recovery capsule of the Hayabusa spacecraft.

Launched in 2003, Hayabusa touched down on Itokawa in November 2005. An on-board device meant to fire pellets at the asteroid and dislodge what they hoped would be peanut-sized asteroid samples failed. After a long, troubled journey home, romanticized in the Japanese press, the spacecraft deposited its return capsule in the Australian desert in June.

Initial examination with an optical microscope showed some dust but that was found to be either from the capsule itself or picked up during launch.

The 100 or so grains reported yesterday are tiny—micron scale. They were scraped off the sides of the capsule’s inner container with a remote control Teflon spatula, 6 mm long and 3 mm wide, and then examined with an electron microscope.

JAXA researchers say they are not metallic fragments, thereby ruling out the possibility that they came from the capsule itself, but they also say there is no evidence yet to conclude that they are from the asteroid. Still the fact that there were so many particles has given them, and the Japanese public, hope.

It certainly won’t be the peanut-sized asteroid rocks that they had hoped to bring back, but as the first samples from an asteroid, even the smallest particles would have huge significance.

Next month they will take a closer look, splitting the particles and using the synchrotron light of Spring-8 to observe the crystal structure. The tests are expected to take several months. And there’s also another chance for success—a second, yet unexamined compartment within the recovery capsule which scientists plan to open later this month.