Japan space agency on asteroid probe findings

Officials from Japan's space agency said on Thursday they found particles of different sizes from a sample the country's Hayabusa2 spacecraft brought back from a distant asteroid this month, a mission they praised as a milestone in planetary research.

Particles from compartment A gathered during the first touchdown were visibly smaller than particles from compartment C which were gathered during the second touchdown. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency announced earlier this month that they have found more than the anticipated amount of soil and gases inside the capsule.

"The reason why they (the particles) are large, there might be a few reasons, but one possibility is the place during the 2nd touchdown was a hard bedrock surface so larger particles broke and entered the compartment C," said Tomohiro Usui, manager of JAXA's Astromaterials Science Research Group.

A slide from the JAXA presentation also indicated the possible presence of an "artificial object", however Usui did not comment on it. The pan-shaped capsule, 40 centimeters (15 inches) in diameter, was dropped by Hayabusa2 from space to a predetermined spot in a sparsely populated Australian desert on Dec. 6 at the end of its six-year round trip to Ryugu, more than 300 million kilometers (190 million miles) from Earth. The capsule arrived in Japan earlier this month for research that scientists hope will provide insight into the origins of the solar system and life on Earth.