By Brendan Trembath
A Japanese spacecraft is due to land on the Woomera test range in South Australia's outback in June.
If the mission is successful, it will be the first time a spacecraft has made contact with an asteroid and returned to Earth.
The Hayabusa spacecraft, which made contact with an asteroid five years ago, is expected to be carrying valuable samples from it.
Australia Department of Innovations' Dr Michael Green says people in the vicinity should be able to see the spacecraft's re-entry.
"There will be obviously a re-entry trail that will be visible, weather permitting, and that will be like a shooting star in the sky as it comes in to Woomera," he said.
The Woomera Prohibited Area, as it is officially known, stretches 127,000 square kilometres in the north-west of South Australia.
This should be plenty of room for the well-travelled spacecraft to land safely, especially considering its size.
"[It's] about the size of a basketball, or perhaps a little bigger, and weighs about 17 kilograms," Dr Green said.
Dr Green says it is unclear how much of the asteroid has been collected, but estimates about 100 grams.
"This is a world first from the Japanese space agency to send out a spacecraft to an asteroid and bring sample material from that asteroid back to Earth for scientific analysis in Japan," he said.
The asteroid explorer Hayabusa was launched on the May 9, 2003.
Its name is Japanese for "peregrine falcon".
Japan's space agency says in 2005, after a 2 billion kilometre voyage, Hayabusa landed on the asteroid Itokawa to collect a sample of its surface.
One of the spacecraft's engine's was leaking fuel, but the agency says the mission continued anyway.
The mission's dual purpose is to learn more about asteroids and test the capsule technology used for the operation.
Australia's role
Australia's Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Kim Carr, says it is a great opportunity for Australia.
"This is a scientific mission which will allow Australia to demonstrate its capability," he said.
"We'll be working closely with the Japanese to ensure the safety of the Australian public and to demonstrate the fact that Australia is a very good place to undertake space activities".
Senator Carr says Woomera, being remote and the largest land-based test range in the world, is ideally suited to spacecraft launches and landings.
"It's controlled by the Defence Department, [which] has enormous expertise to safely manage the conduct of operations such as this and facilities that are available in terms of monitoring," he said.
"We'll have personnel stationed at the Japanese space centres to actually make decisions about the approvals necessary to ensure that ... the vehicle is on course, that it's functioning properly and that there is security in terms of its operation.
"So we're pretty confident that there'll be no difficulties in regard to its landing safely".
ABC News Australia
