On July 11 , the Nipponese spacecraft Hayabusa2 successfully performed itssecond touchdownon the surface of asteroid Ryugu . The touchdown was necessary to accumulate the first - ever sample distribution of fabric from below the control surface of an asteroid . This feat was many months in the making . The probe shot a missile in April to release the cloth and only in July was it safe to go down and hoard it .

Now , the Japanese Space Agency , JAXA , has put togethera videoof the image taken by Hayabusa2 as it come on the asteroid , gather the sampling , and then bounced back off into space , lifting the loose filth from the open of Ryugu .

The video was make by sew together together images captured by the space vehicle ’s CAM - H instrument over the 7 minute and 50 s it took for it to go down and vanish back up . It starts with image at about 8.5 meters ( 28 feet ) from the surface and   ends when Hayabusa2 is about 150 meters ( 492 invertebrate foot ) from the asteroid . The images were taken at interval between 0.5 and   5   mo .

The video has been speed - up , but it still shows how careful the control team had to be to maneuver the craftiness . Hayabusa2 collected the first subsurface material of a celestial objective beyond the Moon . asteroid have not changed much in the billions of years that they have existed . As the squad said when the collection was announced , they manage to get a piece of the chronicle of the Solar System .

In a few months , the craft will move from its current orbit to a homing trajectory , which will take it near our major planet in December 2020 . It will thenrelease a   font contain   the sampling , which will lightly amount down through the Earth ’s atmosphere and nation somewhere in Australia . This sample and two previous collected by spacecraft will all return to Earth next twelvemonth .

Before that , the probe still has some employment to do around   Ryugu . It will soon bring out a rover on the surface of the asteroid , its quaternary from thebeginning of the delegacy . It will also keep to study the asteroid until its final good day .

Dropping the sample might not be the end of   the charge , though . The probe is fall back to Earth with a wad of fuel , so there ’s a possibility that it will be sent back into deep space to study another asteroid .