Hayabusa Update: Capsule Contains Dust Particles

Image Credit:NASA/Ed Schilling

As you may recall, On June 13th The unmanned Japanese space probe Hayabusa returned to earth following a seven year round trip to rendezvous with and sample a near Earth asteroid known as Itokowa. Malfunctions during the mission made it unclear weather or not Hayabusa had successfully collected samples from the asteroid. Now, an article in the Japanese Times Online, posted July 6th, reports dust particles have been found inside the container. While it seems most likely that those particles will turn out to have originated here on earth, JAXA will be closely analyzing the dust to see if in fact any of it may have come from Itokowa.
-CAINE-