Hayabusa returned to earth with samples of the Itokawa asteroid collected in 2005

A small, severely damaged spacecraft named Hayabusa has been limping back to Earth with a jury-rigged ion drive.

The Hayabusa mission was launched to asteroid Itokawa in 2003, spending three months at the 500m-long potato-shaped space rock in 2005.

The main spacecraft, along with the sample-storage capsule, should have come back to Earth in 2007, but a succession of technical problems delayed their return by three years.

It could be some months before scientists are able to say with confidence that Hayabusa did indeed capture fragments of Itokawa.