The Space Seed returns to Earth

The Space Shuttle Endeavour made its final landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA in the early morning of June 1st, carrying the Space Seed for Asian Future 2010-2011 package to Earth. The package was presented to JAXA staff several hours after the landing. JAXA will bring it back to the Tsukuba Space Center, then send the seeds back to their countries of origin, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, where various education and outreach activities are planned to fully exploit these priceless materials.

A temperature logger and a passive dosimeter package, PADLES, which measures the exposure in terms of cosmic radiation dosage, were also included in the package. JAXA will analyze the data and pass them on to those countries later.