The Hayabusa spaceprobe has snatched samples from the asteroid Itokawa, according to JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
The probe touched down at 0707 Japanese time (2207 GMT Friday) and its computer system shot a metal ball into the asteroid to drive up material for collection. The operation went "without failure", said JAXA official Yasunori Matoba, and the craft then took off again.
The Hayabusa team will not know for sure whether it picked up surface material until the craft returns to Earth in 2007, after a 2-billion-kilometre journey, but they are confident it worked.
"The project team members were very delighted to have seen all the procedures of collecting samples apparently ended without any problem," said project manager Junichiro Kawaguchi. "We have overcome the biggest challenge in the project."
If so, it will be the first time samples have been taken from an asteroid and a welcome success for a mission dogged by misfortune.
The first touchdown on Itokawa, last Sunday, ended in failure when the metal pellet failed to fire. However, there is a chance that some dust may have been dislodged and collected during this manoeuvre by the craft bouncing on the surface.
On 12 November, Hayabusa lost contact with a small robotic rover – called Minerva – that was designed to hop around the surface of the asteroid capturing images and taking temperature readings. Mission controllers believe Minerva missed the asteroid entirely and drifted off into space.
And on 4 November, a practice descent was aborted when the probe sent an "anomalous signal" back to mission control. Even before all that, two of its three stabilising reaction wheels failed – on 31 July and 3 October 2005, respectively.
But the mission is far from simple. Landing on a flat targeted site on Itokawa is tough because the potato-shaped asteroid – 540 by 270 metres – is revolving. It also is small and therefore has very low gravity, meaning the craft is not gently pulled towards the object.
Hayabusa was launched in May 2003 with a budget of 12.7 billion yen ($100 million dollars) and is scheduled to return to Earth in June 2007. Once near Earth, the capsule containing the asteroid samples will detach from the probe and land in the Australian desert.
The asteroid was formed 4.6 billion years ago at the same time as the solar system and represent geological “fossils” from that time. The samples could also provide information about the composition and structure of asteroids which would be vital for any future plan to deflect a celestial object on a collision course with Earth.
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