Japanese Hayabusa asteroid mission comes home

landing on an Asteroid then returning back to Earth !

Even if they don't retrieve any Asteroid dust from this capsule the mission was still amazing .
BBC
A capsule thought to contain the first samples grabbed from the surface of an asteroid has returned to Earth.

The Japanese Hayabusa container hit the top of the atmosphere just after 1350 GMT, producing a bright fireball over southern Australia.

It had a shield to cope with the heat of re-entry and a parachute for the final drop to the ground.

A recovery team later reported they had identified the landing zone in the Woomera Prohibited Range...

The main spacecraft, along with the sample-storage capsule, should have come back to Earth in 2007, but a succession of technical problems delayed their return by three years.

Even now, there is still some uncertainty as to whether the capsule really does contain pieces of Itokawa...

However, Japanese space agency (Jaxa) officials remain confident of success.