Japan's seven-year mission to collect samples from an asteroid and return them to Earth ended a successful flight as the sample capsule of the Hayabusa spacecraft blazed down through the atmosphere over Australia. The rest of the spacecraft will burn up in the atmosphere, but the capsule had a parachute and heat shield designed to allow for recovery.
When that is recovered, we will see if it contains asteroid samples. If so, they could tell a lot about asteroids and the early Solar System. Even if no samples are inside, the fact that Japan was able to fly the mission, overcome several problems along the way, and bring the probe and the capsule back to Earth as planned establishes Japan as a nation capable of being a major factor in space exploration.
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