Tokio, December 4, AZERTAC

A Japanese H-2A launcher blasted off from an idyllic island spaceport Tuesday, dispatching a daring six-year expedition to bring a piece of an asteroid back to Earth.

The Hayabusa 2 mission’s roundtrip voyage began at 0422 GMT Wednesday (11:22 p.m. EST Tuesday) with a thunderous ascent from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan.

The 1,300-pound spacecraft rode a hydrogen-fueled H-2A rocket through clouds hanging over the seaside spaceport, leaving a twisting column of exhaust in its wake before disappearing hundreds of miles over the Pacific Ocean.

The rocket’s upper stage engine fired two times to accelerate Hayabusa 2 on a speedy departure fast enough to break free of the pull of Earth’s gravity.

The robotic explorer, packed with four stowaway landers to be deployed to the asteroid’s surface, separated from the H-2A rocket at 0609 GMT (1:09 a.m. EST). Applause could be heard in a live webcast of the launch provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which manages the Hayabusa 2 mission.

The launch marked the opening chapter in the most ambitious mission to an asteroid ever attempted. The roundtrip journey will take six years to complete, and Hayabusa 2 promises to expand scientists’ understanding of how asteroids may have seeded Earth with water and organic molecules, the building blocks of life.

Hayabusa 2 is heading for asteroid 1999 JU3, a carbon-rich world just 900 meters — about 3,000 feet — across with a tenuous gravity field 60,000 times weaker than Earth’s.

The mission follows up on the achievements of Japan’s Hayabusa 1 probe, which made the first roundtrip flight to an asteroid from 2003 to 2010. The first Hayabusa mission encountered several crippling problems, including a fuel leak, failures in its pointing system, and a glitch with the craft’s sample collection system.

The spacecraft will arrive at the asteroid in June 2018 after swinging by Earth late next year to get a boost to the mission’s destination, which circles the sun between the orbits of Earth and Mars.

Hayabusa 2 will release a container with the asteroid samples for a blazing re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere for a parachute-assisted landing in the Australian outback in December 2020.

“Learning about asteroids is important for the future of space exploration,” said Hitoshi Kuninaka, JAXA’s Hayabusa 2 program manager. “This is a difficult mission, but in order for humans to expand from Earth into space, it will be necessary to meet challenges. We need a lot of technology and information about the solar system, and Hayabusa 2 will make a big step in these areas to help us be ready to plan and collaborate in the next step of space exploration.”