Op-ed | Japan’s Space Journey: From the Land of the Rising Sun to the Moon

On Dec. 6, 2020, a Japanese spacecraft raced back from deep space at more than 26,000 mph (11.7 km/s), dropped a capsule into Earth’s atmosphere and sped away. The payload was recovered as intended in the Australian outback, and within it were more than 5 grams of material collected from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu. The successful Hayabusa2 sample-return mission was a first. The celestial body sampled, the technology and processes used to do it, the size and quality of what was brought back — Japan accomplished what no other nation had before it.