If it is, it will be only the fourth sort of extraterrestrial material returned to Earth by a spacecraft—the others being the moon rocks brought back by the Apollo missions and three unmanned Russian Luna craft, the material from comet Wild 2 picked up by the Stardust mission in 2004, and the samples of solar wind collected between 2001 and 2004 by the Genesis mission. Of course, nature delivers extraterrestrial material to Earth every day, in the form of meteorites, most of which are, in effect, tiny asteroids, so whether anything truly new will be discovered by looking at Hayabusa's trove is moot.

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