A Japanese deep-space probe named the Falcon became the first
ever to collect asteroid dust, during a seven-year odyssey that
ended with its return to Earth over the Australian desert this
year, Japan said today. The unmanned probe Hayabusa, meaning
"falcon", made a pinpoint landing five years ago on an asteroid
300 milllion kilometres from Earth - about twice as far as the
sun. Since the probe's return in June, scientists had carried
out a lengthy analysis of the samples it brought back to confirm
they were genuinely extraterrestrial after technical problems
during the mission. "It's a world first and a remarkable
accomplishment that it brought home material from a celestial
body other than the moon," Japan's science and technology
minister, Yoshiaki Takagi, told a news conference in Tokyo. The
team was "unbelievably lucky," said Junichiro Kawaguchi, the
manager of the Hayabusa project, telling reporters: "I don't
know how to describe what has been beyond our dreams, but I'm
overwhelmed by emotion." Hayabusa