Read on Twitter
With Hayabusa2's TCM-5 engine burn complete, here's a thread with some of my reporting on the mission, ahead of this evening's return of the sample capsule.
Hayabusa2 arrived at the asteroid 162173 Ryugu in June 2018. Here, mission manager Makoto Yoshikawa told me what was in store now the spacecraft has reached its destination https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44603120
By September, the spacecraft was ready to deploy two robotic "rovers" to the surface of Ryugu. The rovers, making up the Minerva II-1 instrument package, were designed to move around by hopping, under the asteroid's low gravity https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45578795
They sent back some pretty impressive images from Ryugu (this story by the BBC's World news team) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45598156
More of those images from the surface https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45667350 and an equally impressive video https://twitter.com/haya2e_jaxa/status/1045278816619261953
In October 2018, Hayabusa2 deployed another instrument package to the surface - the German-French Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT). It was designed to study Ryugu's mineralogy and magnetic characteristics https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45655153
There's a summary of MASCOT results here at the @DLR_en website https://www.dlr.de/content/en/articles/news/2019/03/20190715_mascot-confirms-what-scientists-have-long-suspected.html
In February 2019, the spacecraft collected a sample from the surface. Prof Alan Fitzsimmons explained why the material was so interesting: "It's possible such asteroids may have brought to Earth both the water and the organic material necessary for life." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47293317
The following month, mission scientists outlined what they had found so far at the LPSC meeting in Texas. Their results, published in Science, showed that Ryugu was a "rubble pile" asteroid, formed from fragments blasted off a bigger space rock https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47633649
After using a copper projectile to blast a hole in the asteroid https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47818460 Hayabusa2 touched down in the crater to pick up a "pristine" sample https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48946603
The @JAXA_en spacecraft left Ryugu in November last year, beginning its voyage home (reporting by BBC News world team) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-50403272
