Hayabusa2 comes home: remarkable space probe could open another window into how life originated

The six-year round trip to an asteroid named Ryugu will end in the red sands of Woomera, Australia

The Japanese space agency's remarkable Hayabusa2 mission will on Sunday deliver the second-ever artificially collected sample of asteroid material when a return capsule falls to Earth at the Woomera rocket range in South Australia.

The Hayabusa2 probe has been on a 6bn km, 30bn ($388m) round trip to an asteroid named Ryugu, which started six years ago in December 2014. After landing on Ryugu twice last year, the spacecraft began its return journey to drop a capsule protected by a heat shield to deliver its payload.