The capsule with first samples of asteroid subsurface recovered in Australia

A Japanese embassy to collect the first samples of asteroid subsurface has been a success after the capsule taking the material arrived safely in the Australian Outback.

The spacecraft Hayabusa2 published the small capsule on Saturday and sent it towards Earth to deliver samples taken from under the surface of asteroid Ryugu, which it left a year ago some 300 million kilometres from Earth.

It is a first in space history - the successful combination of underground samples from an asteroid, which is some of the oldest objects in the solar system, and so could provide information about how the solar system evolved.

Hayabusa2 touched down twice on Ryugu, first to collect dust samples in February 2019, and then to manage the more difficult work of collecting subsurface material in July that year.

To do this, it blasted a crater in the asteroid’s surface before landing in it.

Ryugu in Japanese means “Dragon Palace,” the name of a sea-bottom castle in a Japanese folk tale.

The capsule carrying the precious space cargo landed successfully in the remote Australian Outback, in the sparsely populated area about Woomera in southern Australia.

After about just two hours the reentry, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said its helicopter search team got the capsule in the planned landing area. The retrieval of the pan-shaped case, about 40 centimetres (15 inches) in diameter, was closed after another two hours.

“The capsule was finding work at the landing site was completed," the company announced in a tweet. "We practised a lot for today and it ended safe."