It was always a high-risk mission. No spacecraft has safely brought back a sample from the Solar System since the Soviet probe returned with lunar soil in the 1970s. So when, on 25 November 2005, a team from the Japanese space agency monitored the descent of the Hayabusa spacecraft towards the bumpy surface of the asteroid Itokawa, everyone in the control room was tense. Once Hayabusa was 360 metres above the asteroid, the touchdown command was issued. "I felt as if all the people in the room were riding on it and descending together," recalls Junya Tera-zono, the agency's publications officer, who was busy posting photos and live updates to a website as the spacecraft descended.
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