When was the first mission to land on an asteroid completed?

Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission successfully landed on asteroid Ryugu for sample collection in 2019, making it one of the first controlled touch-and-go operations on an asteroid. The earlier Hayabusa mission had also returned asteroid samples, but Hayabusa2’s Ryugu operations were especially ambitious and precise. These missions showed that even tiny, low-gravity worlds can be explored and sampled. The returned material has helped scientists study the building blocks of the Solar System.