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  The surface of asteroid Ryugu, as observed by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft just before landing. Photo: JAXA/U. Tokyo/Kochi U./Rikkyo U./Nagoya U./Chiba Inst. Tech./Meiji U./U. Aizu/AIST, CC BY 4.0 Tokyo:  Samples of dust collected by a Japanese space probe from an asteroid some 300 million km (186 million miles) from Earth were better than hoped for, with one researcher saying he was lost for words when they opened the capsule for the first time. The samples, the climax of a six-year space odyssey to the Ryugu asteroid by the space probe Hayabusa2, arrived in Japan last week but researchers did not know for sure until this week if they had actually gotten anything. “We were aiming for 100 mg or more, and we definitely got that,” said Hirotaka Sawada at Japan Space Exploration Agency (JAXA), who said he was speechless when he first glimpsed the sample. “I think that next I probably screamed, I don’t really remember,” he told a news conference. “It was really different from what I...

  New Zealand Plans Vaccine Roll-out In Second Half Of 2021 New Zealand will begin to offer free COVID19 vaccines to its entire population by the middle of next year, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Thursday New Zealand Plans Vaccine Roll-out In Second Half Of 2021 New Zealand will begin to offer free COVID19 vaccines to its entire population by the middle of next year, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Thursday. WELLINGTON: New Zealand will begin to offer free COVID-19 vaccines to its entire population by the middle of next year, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Thursday. The government said it had secured enough vaccines to inoculate all of the country’s 5 million people, with two new agreements signed with pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and Novavax. The agreements secure access to 7.6 million doses from AstraZeneca, enough for 3.8 million people, and 10.72 million doses from Novavax, enough for 5.36 million people. Both vaccines require two doses to be admin...