APOD: 2020 December 14 - Capsule Returns from Asteroid Ryugu

Thank you my friend Maj William W. 'Bill' Price for posting the NASA Video of the Day (AVOD) for Monday, December 14, 2020 entitled "Capsule Returns from Asteroid Ryugu."

Images:
1. 2020-12-14 Japanese Hayabusa2 Spacecraft reveal secrets from Asteroid Ryugu
2. 2020-12-14 Landing site on Asteroid Ryugu
3. Japanese Hayabusa2 Spacecraft

APOD Background
"Explanation: The streak across the sky is a capsule returning from an asteroid. It returned earlier this month from the near-Earth asteroid 162173 Ryugu carrying small rocks and dust from its surface. The canister was released by its mothership, Japan's Hayabusa2, a mission that visited Ryugu in 2018, harvested a surface sample in 2019, and zoomed back past Earth. The jettisoned return capsule deployed a parachute and landed in rural Australia. A similar mission, NASA's OSIRIS- REx, recently captured rocks and dust from a similar asteroid, Bennu, and is scheduled to return its surface sample to Earth in 2023. Analyses of compounds from these asteroids holds promise to give humanity new insights about the early Solar System and new clues about how water and organic matter came to be on Earth."

Chamberlain - Asteroid Blues
Frames taken from "The tree of life" (T. Malick)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OhunIu7Iks

FYI Maj Robert Thornton Lt Col Charlie Brown COL Mikel J. Burroughs Sgt (Join to see) PO1 William "Chip" Nagel Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen SGT Denny Espinosa Sgt Vance Bonds MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. TSgt David L. SPC Nancy GreenePO2 (Join to see) SSG Michael Noll SPC Margaret Higgins Maj Marty Hogan SMSgt David A Asbury SMSgt Lawrence McCarter

Fascinating stuff...

This whole operation is simply amazing.