Japan's space agency said Tuesday a capsule brought back by the Hayabusa2 space probe last week from a distant asteroid contained the world's first sample of a material in a gaseous state from deep space.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said it has confirmed the presence of a "substantial amount" of soil samples from the Ryugu asteroid, located more than 300 million kilometers from Earth, in the container.
"The sample return mission has been perfectly completed," JAXA's Hayabusa2 project manager Yuichi Tsuda said in an online press conference.