A capsule released by Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft containing pristine asteroid fragments briefly turned into a fireball as it returned to the Earth’s atmosphere, before landing in the South Australian outback In the early hours of Sunday. For the past six years, Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft has conducted a remarkable 5.2bn km mission to extract the first subsurface samples from the asteroid Ryugu, which scientists hope will shed light on the origins of life