Posted: Mon, Jun 2, 2003, 1:41 PM ET (1741 GMT)
A capsule from a robotic Japanese spacecraft carrying experiment samples returned to Earth last Friday. The 2-meter-long capsule from the Unmanned Space Experiment Recovery System (USERS) spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific 1,000 kilometers south of Tokyo early Friday, May 30. The retrieval marks the first time that Japan has recovered a capsule of any time from an orbiting spacecraft. The capsule carried samples of a superconducting material manufactured in orbit on the USERS spacecraft. USERS had been in orbit since its launch on an H-2A rocket in September 2002; the main body of the spacecraft remains in orbit.
