Editing JAXA (section)

=== Small body exploration: ''Hayabusa'' mission ===
{{See also|Hayabusa|Hayabusa2}}
[[File:Hayabusa hover.jpg|thumb|''[[Hayabusa]]'']]
On 9 May 2003, ''[[Hayabusa]]'' (meaning [[Peregrine falcon]]), was launched from an [[M-V]] rocket. The goal of the mission was to collect samples from a small [[near-Earth asteroid]] named [[25143 Itokawa]]. The craft [[space rendezvous|rendezvoused]] with the asteroid in September 2005. It was confirmed that the spacecraft successfully landed on the asteroid in November 2005, after some initial confusion regarding the incoming data. ''Hayabusa'' returned to Earth with samples from the asteroid on 13 June 2010.

Hayabusa was the world's first spacecraft to return asteroid samples to Earth and the world's first spacecraft to make a round trip to a celestial body farther from Earth than the Moon.<ref name="mainichi240722">[https://web.archive.org/web/20240219022008/https://mainichi.jp/articles/20220722/k00/00m/040/027000c 次に目指す高みとは…はやぶさ2が切り開いた宇宙開発の未来／下.] [[Mainichi Shimbun]]. 24 July 2022</ref>

Hayabusa2 was launched in 2014 and returned samples from asteroid [[162173 Ryugu]] to Earth in 2020.<ref name="mainichi240722"/>