Japan's Hayabusa 2 has landed on an asteroid, shot it with a special bullet and returned to space

Japan's Hayabusa 2 has landed on an asteroid, shot it with a special bullet and returned to space

The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa 2 has just completed the next phase of its multi-part, multi-year mission by shooting a bullet into the asteroid it had been circling and returning to space. Hopefully, the spacecraft has been able to collect samples of asteroid material kicked off from the surface by the impact from the specially made bullet that the Hayabusa craft shot. Scientists said that collecting material from the Ryugu asteroid could offer clues to support a hypothesis of how water and life formed on the surface of the Earth in the early days of the planet's formation.