NASA/JSC Staff Visit the JAXA Curation Facility: Collaboration in Curation for MMX, the Artemis Program, and Future Sample Return Missions

From April 13 to 16, 2026, the JAXA Curation Facility welcomed two staff members from NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC): Dr. Christopher Snead, curator of the Hayabusa2 returned samples at JSC, and Dr. Michael Huh, lead for cold curation at JSC.

At JSC, a wide variety of extraterrestrial materials are curated, including a portion of the asteroid Ryugu samples returned by JAXA's Hayabusa2 mission and asteroid Bennu samples returned by NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission. During their visit, Dr. Snead and Dr. Huh toured the clean rooms and various sample-handling facilities at the JAXA Curation Facility. They also exchanged views with JAXA curators on long-term sample preservation, sample-handling procedures, and approaches to the curation of planetary samples under cryogenic conditions.

In particular, active discussions focused on techniques for subsampling microscopic samples collected by the contact pads attached to the landing legs of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, as well as approaches to the curation of cryogenic planetary samples expected to be returned from permanently shadowed regions near the lunar south pole as part of the Artemis program. The knowledge and experience shared during these discussions provided valuable insights for JAXA's preparations for future international sample return missions. Through this visit, mutual understanding of each other's curation activities was further strengthened, providing an important opportunity to enhance future collaboration.