The Hayabusa mission - Its seven years flight

The Hayabusa spacecraft aiming at technology demonstration for world's first sample and return from an extra-terrestrial object was launched by the fifth M-V rocket from Uchinoura Space Center, JAXA on May 9, 2003. It went through several troubles and hardships during totally 7 years of interplanetary flight, it successfully returned to the earth and completed the powered-flight by the ion thruster in the begging of 2010. After successive trajectory correction maneuvers for the reentry, the mother spacecraft, Hayabusa successfully released a small sample-return capsule with asteroid Itokawa sample contained in the sample canister aboard. The capsule has entered the earth atmosphere in the desert of the Australia on June 13, 2010, and was successfully recovered by June 15.