A spacecraft has landed on a distant asteroid where it will try to collect material to provide clues about the origin of the solar system.
A signal sent from space indicated the Japanese Hayabusa2 spacecraft had touched down on Friday.
It was met with rapturous applause from staff at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency as it landed.
The craft is programmed to extend a pipe and shoot a pinball-like object into the asteroid which will unearth material from beneath the surface.
Should that succeed the craft will collect samples to eventually be sent back to Earth. Three landings are planned in which it will attempt the manoeuvre.
Japanese Education Minister Masahiko Shibayama said the space agency had concluded from its data after the first touchdown that steps to collect samples were performed successfully.
JAXA, the Japanese space agency, has likened the touchdown attempts to trying to land on a baseball mound from the spacecraft's operating location 12 miles above the asteroid.
The asteroid, named Ryugu after an undersea palace in a Japanese folktale, is about 3,000ft in diameter and 170 million miles from Earth.
The event came after an Israeli spacecraft rocketed towards the moon for the country's first attempted lunar landing.
Incredible pictures showed SpaceX's powerful Falcon 9 blasting cargo out of Earth’s atmosphere then into the stars during the launch on Thursday.
