''Japan's Hayabusa2 space capsule carrying samples from asteroid Ryugu lands in outbackAustalia''
After flying a 5.2 billion kilometre mission (3.2 billion miles) the
@JAXA_en Hayabusa2 spacecraft returned past Earth and dropped a small space capsule containing the first-ever sub-surface samples from asteroidRyugu.During its descent, the 40cm capsule turned into a fireball streaming across the night sky and landed safely in Woomera, South Australia. On Sunday morning local time, a helicopter search team was deployed into the Australian bush to locate and recover the capsule.
Ryugu was discovered on 10 May 1999 by astronomers with the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research at the Lincoln Lab's ETS near Socorro, New Mexico, in the United States. It was given the provisional designation 1999 JU3.[1] The asteroid was officially named "Ryugu" by the Minor Planet Center on 28 September 2015 (M.P.C. 95804).[16] The name refers to Ryūgū-jō(Dragon Palace), a magical underwater palace in a Japanese folktale.In the story, the fisherman Urashima Tarō travels to the palace on the back of a turtle, and when he returns, he carries with him amysterious box,much like Hayabusa2 returning with samples.[1][17]