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Loading contentA mission that collects material from a small body and brings it back to Earth for laboratory study — Hayabusa (Itokawa), Hayabusa2 (Ryugu), OSIRIS-REx (Bennu), and Stardust (comet Wild 2).
Collecting material from a target body and returning it to Earth.
NASA's comet sample-return mission — it flew through the coma of comet Wild 2, captured dust in aerogel, and parachuted the sample capsule to Earth in 2006: the first sample return from a comet, and the first return of solid material from beyond the Moon (NASA's Genesis had returned solar-wind atoms in 2004). Its extended mission (Stardust-NExT) later imaged the Deep Impact crater on Tempel 1.
JAXA's pathfinding asteroid sample-return mission — the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid and return material to Earth. Despite a cascade of failures (reaction wheels, a fuel leak, an intermittent ion engine, and a lost lander), it recovered more than a thousand microscopic grains of the asteroid Itokawa.
JAXA's follow-up to Hayabusa — a far more capable mission to the carbonaceous asteroid Ryugu. It deployed rovers and a lander, fired a projectile to make an artificial crater and sample subsurface material, and returned 5.4 grams of pristine, water- and organic-bearing rock. The spacecraft is now on an extended mission to a small fast-rotating asteroid.
NASA's first asteroid sample-return mission — it orbited the carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid Bennu, mapped it in detail, and used a touch-and-go manoeuvre to grab a large sample, returning 121.6 grams to Earth in 2023. The spacecraft continued on as OSIRIS-APEX to study the asteroid Apophis.
JAXA's planned mission to the moons of Mars — it will study Phobos and Deimos and return a sample of Phobos to Earth, testing whether the Martian moons are captured asteroids or debris from a giant impact.
A NASA New Frontiers proposal to return a sample from comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko — the comet Rosetta explored. It was a finalist in the New Frontiers 4 competition but was not selected (Dragonfly was chosen instead).
Facts on this topic will be cited from these primary and reference sources.
Mission data, planetary science, space telescopes, and public-domain imagery.
Most NASA-produced imagery is in the public domain; individual items are checked for usage terms before publication.
Japanese missions (Hayabusa, Akatsuki) and space science.