Japanese asteroid explorer Hayabusa2 landed on the surface of asteroid Ryugu for collecting samples and bringing them back to Earth, a live broadcast conducted by Japanese space agency JAXA showed on Friday, Trend reported citing Sputnik.
The asteroid is currently around 300 million kilometres (186 million miles) away from Earth.
Scientists say that the samples, which the Japanese probe will try to collect, may shed light on how the Solar System was created and how life appeared on Earth.
Hayabusa2 was launched in December 2014, and is expected to stay on the asteroid for a period of 18 months before its scheduled return to Earth in 2020. The Hayabusa2 mission has cost the agency roughly $260 million, according to AFP. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the spacecraft after a long period of extensive planning, it also recreated an asteroid and bullet that it has to shoot into the rock to collect samples on Earth for relevant experiments.