Special delivery: Japan space probe to bring asteroid dust to Earth

Tokyo (AFP) Dec 4, 2020

Call it a special delivery: after six years in space, Japan's Hayabusa-2 probe is heading home, but only to drop off its rare asteroid samples before starting a new mission. The fridge-sized probe, launched in December 2014, has already thrilled scientists by landing on and gathering material from an asteroid some 300 million kilometres (185 million miles) from Earth. But its work isn't