The team has unofficially named the landing site "Tamatebako," which means "treasure box," another nod to the Japanese fairy tale about a fisherman who gets a treasure box from an underwater dragon palace called Ryugu.

You might also recall that the start of Hayabusa2's descent to Ryugu was inexplicably delayed, and then, the spacecraft made up for lost time by speeding towards its Gate 2 checkpoint at 90 centimeters per second instead of 40. We now have an answer to what happened: Hayabusa2 was in a different position than expected when ground controllers prepared to start its descent. It sounds like this wasn't a major surprise; thanks to prior touchdown rehearsals and ground simulations the team was able to create and verify a new descent trajectory in just 5 hours, while Hayabusa2 sat patiently at its 20-kilometer starting gate. To keep the moment of touchdown at roughly the same time, they increased the descent speed, which also wasn't a big deal, because they've trained for speeds up to a full meter per second.

However, that’s not the reason touchdown occurred roughly 36 minutes earlier than predicted. Hayabusa2 reached its final 45-meter descent checkpoint right on time. From there, it was on its own, performing the final touchdown sequence via a series of automated checkpoints. A JAXA-provided timeline shows Hayabusa2 was much more efficient than predicted: In just 22 minutes instead of 58, the spacecraft locked on to the target marker, descended to 8.5 meters, moved horizontally to the final drop point, oriented itself, and free-fell to the surface. It’s quite a nimble little spacecraft!