Melbourne: A Japanese space probe carrying the first extensive samples of an asteroid has succesuly landed on the earth.  Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)  on Sunday that probe has completed its six-year mission, landing safely in the remote Australian outback.

The capsule carrying rock samples entered the atmosphere just before 2:30 am Japan time (1730 GMT Saturday). According to the reports, The samples, collected from a distant asteroid and expected to amount to no more than 0.1 grams of material were dropped off by Japanese space probe Hayabusa-2. The mission seeks to answer some fundamental questions about the origins of the solar system and where molecules like water came from.Scientists are especially keen to discover whether the samples contain organic matter, which could have helped to more about Earth and the universe.

JAXA said that early on Sunday, the capsule lit up as it reentered the earth's atmosphere and landed in the Woomera restricted area, around 460 kilometres (285 miles) north of Adelaide, where it was found by scientists and brought to a local research station. The spacecraft, launched from Japan's Tanegashima space centre in 2014, took four years to reach the asteroid Ryugu before taking a sample and heading back to Earth in November 2019.

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