Hayabusa Successful

Japan's ambitious mission to retrieve samples from a comet, Hayabusa, did precisely that. Though the probe returned to Earth last June, the Japanese have been careful about opening the container that would have any samples, working through procedures to limit possible contamination of samples by Earthly sources and document exactly what those sources might be in case contamination occurred.

This week, Japanese scientists and engineers finally opened the key container and determined they had in fact collected dust grain-sized samples from Comet Itakawa during a 2005 encounter. Careful analysis of the samples wll yield new insights into the nature of Itakawa specifically and of comets more generally.