Fresh off the successful launch of its first spy satellites, Japan is now preparing a more ambitious, and less controversial, mission: to bring home the first space rocks since U.S. astronauts gathered samples from the moon over 30 years ago.

If all goes well, Kawaguchi said, the unmanned MUSES-C probe will make three one-second touch-and-go contacts with 1998 SF36, a tiny asteroid some 180 million miles (290 million kilometers) away from Earth, and bring back a gram or so of its surface.

View: Full Article | Source: Space.com