Japanese space capsule carrying asteroid samples lands in Australia

A Japanese space capsule carrying the world’s first asteroid subsurface samples shot across the night sky early Sunday before landing in the remote Australian outback, completing a mission to provide clues to the origin of the solar system and life on Earth, the nation's space agency said on Sunday.

"At 2:28 am (1729 GMT Saturday) today, the capsule made re-entry and landed. I presume some of you have seen the significant trajectory of the fireball at the time of re-entry," Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) president, Hiroshi Yamakawa, told a news conference at its campus in Sagamihara, southwest of Tokyo.

The capsule, which had been released by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft, was recovered in the Woomera restricted area in southern Australia, the space agency said. It will be collected by a recovery team and taken to JAXA's lab.

The spacecraft left the asteroid Ryugu, about 300 million km (180 million miles) away, one year ago. After the spacecraft released the capsule on Saturday, it set off on a new expedition to another distant asteroid.

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