６年ぶりカプセル帰還「ただいま」　「玉手箱」開けるの楽しみ―ＪＡＸＡ

　「ただいま。玉手箱を舞い降ろすことができました」。探査機「はやぶさ２」運用チームを率いる宇宙航空研究開発機構（ＪＡＸＡ）の津田雄一プロジェクトマネジャーは６日午後、試料カプセル回収を報告する記者会見で、いたずらっぽく笑ってみせた。カプセルには小惑星「りゅうぐう」の砂が入っているとみられ、「中を開けるのが大変楽しみ」と期待を込めた。
　試練の連続だった初代はやぶさと比べ、６年に及ぶ往復５２億キロの飛行を順調にこなしたはやぶさ２。津田さんは「メンバーは本当に良くやったと思う」と仲間をねぎらった。
　初代はやぶさの経験を踏まえ、「決して安心せず、慎重に判断しながら一歩一歩やってきた」と強調。カプセルを無事に帰還させ、「夢には見ていたが、こんなうれしい気持ちになるのは想像していなかった」とほほえんだ。
　会見ではカプセルが着地するまでの過程を淡々と説明した津田さん。しかし、大気圏に突入したカプセルが流星のように光を放つ映像が紹介されると、スクリーンを見詰め満足げにうなずいた。
　津田さんの前任者の国中均・ＪＡＸＡ宇宙科学研究所長も「完全にコントロールされたミッション。エンジニア冥利（みょうり）に尽きる」と感慨深げ。「所長としてかなり厳しい指導をしたが、運用チームは大変良くやってくれた」とたたえた。（2020/12/06-20:10）

Yuichi Tsuda, chief of the Hayabusa2 project, expressed his pleasure on Sunday after a capsule believed to contain sand samples from asteroid Ryugu successfully returned to Earth on the day after it was separated from the unmanned probe on Saturday.
   "I look forward to opening the capsule," Tsuda, an official of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, said at a news conference at the government-affiliated agency's campus in the city of Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, eastern Japan. The capsule landed on a desert in Australia early Sunday and was retrieved by a JAXA team later in the day.
   While the first Hayabusa probe, the predecessor of Hayabusa2, faced an array of challenges during its mission to bring back to Earth samples of sand from its target asteroid, Itokawa, the mission of Hayabusa2 was relatively smooth. Still, Tsuda said, "The members of the Hayabusa2 project team worked hard and did a really good job." Hayabusa2 spent about six years traveling a total of some 5.2 billion kilometers between Earth and Ryugu.
   "We worked (on the Hayabusa2 project) step by step while making careful judgments" based on the lessons from the Hayabusa project, Tsuda said. "I had dreamed (of seeing the capsule come back to Earth), but I had never imagined I would be so happy," he said.
   "It was a perfectly controlled mission," Hitoshi Kuninaka, director-general of JAXA's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, said of the Hayabusa2 project. "As chief of the institute, I strictly instructed the project members, but they did it so beautifully," he said.