Japan's space agency completed a complicated touchdown manoeuvre on a distant space rock last month, and it has now released an incredible video from the spacecraft's point of view.

The vessel, Hayabusa2 , is conducting a sample-return mission at a near-Earth asteroid called Ryugu, and last month's touchdown, on the February 21, was perhaps the single most important manoeuvre of the mission.

The new video shows what happened when the probe touched the asteroid.