Material samples brought back
from objects in space can shed light
on billions of years of our solar system's history,
including details about the origin of life here on Earth.
A piece of an asteroid is a piece
of the earliest beginnings of the solar system.
4.6 billion years ago, when our solar system formed,
initially there was just gas and dust swirling around and
that coalesced into planetesimals,
and those things crashed into each other and got bigger
and some became planets,
and those that did not remained as asteroids.
And they're like little snapshots of Earth's beginnings.
But picking up rocks from the surface
of an asteroid or planetary satellite
isn't as easy as it sounds.
It requires voyages of millions of miles to bodies
that have never been seen up close.
Probes need to land on surfaces
with weak gravitational pulls where the surface terrain
is completely unknown, gather samples,
and then make the long trip back.
And while behemoths like NASA and Space X grab headlines,
it's a relatively young space agency,
the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency,
better known as JAXA,
that is taking the giant leap necessary
to bring the mysteries of space back down to Earth.
If we want to find out about the origin of our solar system,
or the origin of life itself, we need to study materials
that were around 4.6 billion years ago
when the solar system was born.
Meteorites actually fit that bill.
And luckily the earth is lousy with them.
Meteorites make impacts with our planet all the time.
There's just one problem.
JAXA itself was officially founded in 2003,
when three different national space agencies
were merged into one.
Prior agencies in Japan had excelled
in infrared and x-ray astronomy and the design and launch
of communication satellites and rockets.
JAXA continued those efforts
as it began devoting money and research
into sample return.
With the need for relatively untouched materials
from space clear,
planning for the world's first sample return
from an asteroid began in 1995.
On May 9th, 2003, the robotic spacecraft Hayabusa,
meaning falcon in English,
launched with its path set for the asteroid Itokawa,
a near earth asteroid located between Mars and Earth.
Using its four ion engines
for the 1,200,000 mile-plus journey,
Hayabusa made contact with Itokawa more than two years
after its launch, in September of 2005.
That is a special challenge
because asteroids are not as large as planets
and they don't have the gravity
to allow you to just land.
So you have to figure out how to land and stick there,
and then have your instrument, your drill,
or your collector, operate in those conditions.
Not everything went according to plan.
Weeks were spent trying and failing
to launch Hayabusa's designated probe,
and there was a fuel leak from its chemical engine.
Part of the difficulty with the Hayabusa mission
was with the size of Itokawa itself.
Only 1100 feet in diameter, it's gravitational pull is weak.
So Hayabusa had to maintain heliocentric orbit,
meaning the craft would track the asteroid's path
around the sun.
In addition, the distance from Earth required Hayabusa
to be fully autonomous, thanks to the communication delay.
The probe was finally able
to touch down and attempt a sample retrieval
on Itokawa for 30 minutes.
As Hayabusa returned, no one knew
whether the sample collection had been a success or not,
but upon its arrival to earth in June of 2010,
less than one milligram of dust from Itokawa
was discovered in its collection module,
a truly tiny specimen, but nevertheless,
the first successful asteroid sample return in history.
One of the conclusions was that the meteorite,
Itokawa, that was studied, was consistent
with stony meteorites that we have found on the earth.
But we couldn't really conclude that
until we could get an actual sample from the asteroid,
bring it back, and make a direct comparison.
JAXA would expand on this flawed,
but successful mission, with the launch of Hayabusa 2
to the asteroid Ryugu in 2014.
The second asteroid sample retrieval mission was notable,
not only for its more advanced machinery and distance
of 9 million miles, but for its destination.
Unlike Itokawa's inert collection of boulder sized rocks,
Ryugu is carbonaceous, meaning it contains some
of the solar systems most pristine, untouched materials;
minerals, ice, and organic materials.
The carbonaceous ones are of great interest to us,
especially in this recent Hayabusa 2 mission
because they contain remnant organic matter
and also, water,
that may have been the source
of organic matter to evolve life,
and the source of water for the oceans on earth.
After it's approach to Ryugu,
Hayabusa 2 deployed a series of three small rovers
that, due to the asteroid's low gravity,
made a series of hops rather than roll on wheels
to survey its surface.
In order to retrieve a subsurface sample free
from the weathering of space,
the craft needed to fire a projectile
into the surface of the asteroid,
and in another first, created a man-made crater in Ryugu.
Hayabusa 2 was then able to descend
and conduct subsurface sampling from the site of the blast.
Unlike the first mission,
the second was able to collect more than five grams
of material from the surface of Ryugu.
Now the largest asteroid sample ever recovered.
Originally, we expected to have the samples greater
than .1 gram, but ended up with 4.5 grams,
which is more than 50 times of the grams.
The next surprise was that,
there is a infrared microscope,
found water bearing minerals.
The Hayabusa 2 mission, sampling Ryugu,
has yet to yield information
because the samples came back in 2020,
they've been distributed to labs all over the world
and we'll soon get information from them
on the origin of water, potentially, from meteorites,
as well as the nature of carbonaceous material.
JAXA's next sample return mission
is set to be its most ambitious and illuminating yet.
And it's to an area of the solar system
that's particularly popular at the moment.
The MMX or Martian Moons Exploration mission
is slated to visit to have Mars' moons - Phobos and Deimos,
with a launch plan for 2024.
MMX will visit and survey both moons
with the hope of collecting a sample
from Phobos in mid 2025, and a return to earth in 2029.
MMX seeks to find whether Phobos and Deimos are asteroids
that became caught in Mars' orbit long ago,
or if they were fragments that coalesced
after a major impact with the red planet,
as scientists more often suspect.
There are also implications for the origins of life
in our solar system.
MMX will be humanity's first opportunity
at bringing back samples from other planetary systems
and JAXA hopes that the round trip visit
will reveal important information that can be used
on future manned missions to the martian sphere,
including whether Phobos can be used as an orbital base.
On MMX, part of the sampling will be done
with the help of US-based Honeybee Robotics,
meet PlanetVac, the planetary vacuum sucks up regolith,
another name for the dirt lying
on top of the bedrock of space bodies,
and collects it to either be analyzed by on-board tools
or stored away for return to earth.
The PlanetVac takes the place of a leg on a lander
and uses compressed gas
that's usually already on board the craft,
to pressurize fuel tanks.
MMX is still currently in the development stage
and JAXA says the cost will be around $419 million.
If all goes according to plan,
JAXA can further cement its track record
as the world's premier experts at sample return.
JAXA sample return missions will, over the coming decades,
help prepare other space agencies for manned missions
to various types of environments in space,
and as research continues
on the samples already brought back,
help to solve some of the mysteries that still exist
about the formation of life on earth.
The world over,
smaller space agencies have found crucial niches
that don't require the massive funding of NASA,
Blue Origin, or Space X.
In this way, JAXA is more than holding their own
with our worlds' space heavyweights.