True to its name, the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa, which means “falcon” in Japanese, hovered over the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa last fall, taking up-close measurements and photographs. Then it ...

Hayabusa attempted its first soft-landing on Itokawa for the purpose of touch down and sample collection on November 20-21, 2005. Below is the data information with the related advance report on its ...

On November 19, 2005, the Japanese Hayabusa (HI-uh-BOOS-uh) spacecraft made the first liftoff from an asteroid. Hayabusa was supposed to return asteroid samples to Earth. Asteroids are space rocks ...

Yet the voyage was justifiably and immediately hailed as the stuff of legend. Against all odds, the Japanese space agency, with support from NASA, managed not only to bring Hayabusa back to Earth but ...

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HOUSTON—The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Hayabusa 2 spacecraft is set to descend close to the surface of the asteroid Ryugu this week to deploy a target marker for the potential ...

MegaPhase cables have contributed to the first and only asteroid dust capture from space. Japanese scientists confirmed their Hayabusa space probe, equipped with MegaPhase's GrooveTube cable ...

On December 6, 2020, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft dropped off pristine samples from asteroid Ryugu in the Australian outback, becoming the world’s second asteroid sample return mission, after the first ...

A replay of data tapes from the Hayabusa asteroid mission has raised doubts about whether the Japanese spacecraft was successful in collecting samples for its return to Earth in June 2007. The doubts ...

A distant asteroid that a Japanese spacecraft is en route to visit could be a much harder target to reach than previously thought, according to new telescope data. The asteroid, known as 1998 KY26, is ...

Update Feb. 22: Success! Read our new story on the results. The original story here continues below. Japan's Hayabusa 2 probe has been staking out the asteroid Ryugu for several months now, and the ...