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[Mysterious music]

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[Narrator] Long ago, a fisherman
named Urashima Tarō

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rescued a small turtle from a 
group of mischievous children.

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A few days later, a giant turtle
greeted Urashima Tarō, 

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and carried him beneath the sea 
to Ryūgū Castle.

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There, Princess Otohime thanked 
Tarō for rescuing

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the little turtle, and rewarded 
him with a mysterious

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box of treasure.

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[Music full]

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[Jazz music]

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[Graham] Today is really 
exciting, we’re  picking up a

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bunch of samples from the 
asteroid Ryugu, and this is an

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asteroid that was visited by a 
spacecraft from Japan.

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This was the Hayabusa2 mission, 
and this is the second

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mission of its kind that they’ve
sent out to asteroids.

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It’s very similar to the 
OSIRIS-REx mission that 

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NASA has to the asteroid Bennu.

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They went and visited this 
asteroid and they landed,

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actually, two rovers on the 
surface to help them

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figure out where they wanted to 
sample, and then brought 

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the samples back here to Earth 
December of 2020.

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Our partners at the Japanese 
Space Agency sent us a

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box full of samples from Ryugu.

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So the first thing we have to do
is make sure 

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that everything is okay.

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It would be really terrible to 
bring something 

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that far away from space and 
then have something 

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go terribly wrong in shipping 
from Japan to the US!

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So we just wanted to check
everything out, make sure 

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that the packaging was intact, 
that everything that was 

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shipped was there, and that 
nothing was leaking 

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and it was all fine – and then 
we put it in the freezer

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for safekeeping.

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So sample return mission is a 
really important

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scientific activity.

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Often when we think about space 
exploration we’re thinking about

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rovers and flyby missions, and 
we forget the true value 

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of just bringing things back 
into our analytical facilities

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here on Earth, and that’s 
something the scientific

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community has been doing really 
well for a long time.

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If you think about the Moon 
samples and solar particles, 

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and now asteroids are just some 
of the many samples that we’re 

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bringing back to try and 
understand the solar system.

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[Music crescendo]