The asteroid explorer Hayabusa2 was launched on December 3, 2014 and arrived at asteroid Ryugu on June 27, 2018. After undertaking a variety of explorations at Ryugu, the spacecraft returned a capsule containing sample material from the asteroid to Earth on December 6, 2020. This new video visually depicts these six years of operation (a condensed version is available here in Japanese). The first and last scenes are live-action, and the rest of the movie is computer generated graphics. Please enjoy reliving the mission that Hayabusa2 carried out over 2195 days.

Along with the release of the Hayabusa2 mission summary video, we also are releasing a summary video of the asteroid explorer, Hayabusa. This movie was originally created to commemorate the end of the Hayabusa Project, but was never released to the public. Hayabusa was launched on May 9, 2003 and ended its life on June 13, 2010 as it burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere, having overcome many hardships to deliver the sample capsule to the Earth. This video uses both computer graphics and live action images to tell the story. While the narration is only in Japanese, we hope you will enjoy the beautiful images and music.