Tempering curiosity with caution, Japanese planetary scientists and their US colleagues are carefully preparing to open the recovery capsule from the Hayabusa spacecraft, which returned to Earth on 13 June following a spectacular high-speed re-entry over the Australian outback. If they're lucky, they may find a speck or two of material from asteroid 25143 Itokawa that could hold clues to the early days of the Solar System. But even if Hayabusa has returned empty, it will have given a boost to future asteroid missions.
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