What is your idea of an asteroid? Many people think of them as potato-shaped, inert, and perhaps rather dull, pock-marked objects – far away in deep space. But over the last ten years, two Japanese space missions – Hayabusa and now Hayabusa 2 – have dispatched that view to the history books. Asteroids are interesting bodies that may be able to explain how life on Earth came about. The Japanese Space Agency, JAXA, has brought back samples to Earth from the 1km-wide asteroid Ryugu – touching down on December 6 in South Australia. The first Hayabusa craft returned samples from…

This story continues at The Next Web