JAXA

A six-year round trip to an asteroid has yielded unprecedented insights into the formation of the solar system. Scientists have analyzed samples returned from asteroid Ryugu, finding a detailed history starting with the oldest material ever found.

Nearly three years after lifting off from French Guiana, the BepiColombo space probe has now set its sights on Mercury for the first time, completing a "flawless" flyby over the weekend and collecting its first images.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has grand plans when it comes to tackling the growing problem of space junk, and startup Rocket Lab has just been enlisted to get its first efforts off the ground.

The BepiColombo orbiter probe passed within 552 km (343 miles) of Venus as it completed one of nine flybys on its way to Mercury. Shortly after the encounter, the ESA/JAXA mission snapped a picture of Venus at a distance of 1,573 km (977 miles).

Two deep-space probes will make flybys of Venus within 30 hours of each other on their way to the inner reaches of the solar system next week. On August 9, the Solar Orbiter will pass by the planet, followed by the BepiColombo orbiter on August 10.

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is planning to send a tiny transforming ball-shaped robot to the lunar surface in 2022 to gather data for the development of a future crewed exploration rover.

It's rare that gravel gets scientists so excited, but these are no ordinary rocks. This is the first glimpse of the samples returned to Earth by Hayabusa2 after its 5.24-billion-km round trip to asteroid Ryugu.

The European Space Agency has selected Thales Alenia Space in the UK to lead a study for the planned mission to "ambush" a passing comet. Called Comet Interceptor, the mission represents a new strategy for investigating comets fresh from the Oort cloud.

The re-entry capsule carrying samples of the asteroid Ryugu collected by Japan's Hayabusa2 deep-space probe has returned to Earth and been recovered after blazing a fiery path in the night sky over Australia.

The joint ESA-JAXA BepiColombo probe has successfully completed the first of two scheduled flybys of Venus, gathering data about the planet's dense carbon dioxide atmosphere as it came to within 10,720 km its surface.

Space robotics startup GITAI and JAXA are teaming up to carry out the world's first robotics demonstration in space by a private company. The new agreement aims to demonstrate the potential for robots to perform specific tasks aboard the ISS.

JAXA and Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) have teamed up to develop a "Super Hi-Vision Camera" for JAXA’s Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission that will capture the first 8K ultra-high-definition images in orbit around the Red Planet.