The space capsule with the valuable cargo crashed in southern Australia late on Saturday night Swedish time.
By then, it had traveled about 220,000 kilometers - and had time to turn into a ball of fire when it penetrated the atmosphere at an altitude of about 120,000 kilometers.
"We found the capsule together with the parachute.
Wow! ”, Writes the Japanese space agency in a Twitter post late on Saturday night.
The samples from the asteroid Ryugo, located more than 300 million kilometers from Earth, were collected by the unmanned Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 over a year ago.
Weighs no more than 0.1 grams
But it was not until Saturday, Japanese time, that the space capsule began its journey to Earth from an altitude of just over 220,000 kilometers.
The cargo - which weighs no more than 0.1 grams - is historic as it is the first time that scientists have been given the opportunity to analyze space dust retrieved below the surface of an asteroid.
Trevor Ireland, a space expert at the Australian National University, was in South Australia to watch the capsule collapse.
He believes the samples from the asteroid will be reminiscent of the meteorite that struck Murchison, Australia more than 50 years ago.
"The Murchison meteorite opened a door of knowledge to the origin of organic matter on earth because it contained both amino acids and plenty of water," Trevor Ireland told The Guardian.
Clues to life on earth
According to Ireland, scientists will investigate whether the asteroid Ryugo could be a source for the creation of organic matter and water on Earth when the solar system was formed.
The hope of finding clues to the origin of life on Earth has also been strengthened by the samples taken below the asteroid's surface.
Thus, valuable data may have been protected from millions of years of space radiation and other environmental factors.
A new assignment is now waiting for Hayabysa2.
The space probe has changed the coordinates towards the asteroid 1998KY26 - a journey that is expected to take ten years.