YR4, which orbits the sun every four years and periodically crosses Earth's orbit. The nature of its orbit makes it a ...

After tackling a suite of technical challenges, Hayabusa returned to Earth with the tiniest hopes of having captured samples from Itokawa, an asteroid 115 million kilometres away from Earth.

The Japanese Space Agency JAXA was the first to successfully land a spacecraft — Hayabusa — on an asteroid called 25143 Itokawa. It was also the first mission to have a spacecraft take off ...