Hayabusa was the first mission to return samples from the surface of an asteroid.
Japan’s Hayabusa spacecraft collected particles from asteroid 25143 Itokawa and returned them to Earth in 2010. The mission launched in 2003 and reached Itokawa in 2005, where it studied the small, irregular body before attempting surface-contact sampling.
Hayabusa faced major problems, including communication difficulties, reaction-wheel failures and uncertainty about whether its sampling mechanism worked. Its return capsule nevertheless landed in Australia on 13 June 2010. Analysis confirmed that it contained asteroid material, making Hayabusa the first mission to return samples from an asteroid.
Hayabusa2 later returned samples from asteroid Ryugu in 2020, while NASA’s OSIRIS-REx returned material from asteroid Bennu in 2023. Those later missions carried much larger and more deliberately collected samples.