Hayabusa became the first spacecraft to return samples from an asteroid to Earth in 2010.
Japan’s Hayabusa mission, operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, visited the near-Earth asteroid 25143 Itokawa. It launched in 2003 and reached the asteroid in 2005. The spacecraft attempted to collect surface material during brief contact operations before beginning its return journey.
Hayabusa suffered serious technical problems, including failures affecting its propulsion and communications. Despite those difficulties, its sample capsule returned to Australia on 13 June 2010. Analysis showed that the capsule contained microscopic particles from Itokawa.
Hayabusa2 later returned larger samples from asteroid Ryugu in 2020, while NASA’s OSIRIS-REx returned samples from asteroid Bennu in 2023. Those later missions are often mentioned alongside Hayabusa, but they did not achieve the first asteroid sample return.