Mission Firsts
Other spacecraft, notably Galileo and NEAR Shoemaker both sent by NASA, have visited asteroids before, but the Hayabusa mission was the first time that an attempt was made to return an asteroid sample to Earth for analysis.
In addition, Hayabusa was the first spacecraft designed to deliberately land on an asteroid and then take off again (NEAR Shoemaker made a controlled descent to the surface of 433 Eros in 2000, but it was not designed as a lander and was eventually deactivated after it arrived). Technically, Hayabusa was not designed to "land"; it simply touches the surface with its sample capturing device and then moves away. However, it was the first craft designed from the outset to make contact with the surface of an asteroid. Junichiro Kawaguchi of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science was appointed to be the leader of the mission.
Despite its designer's intention of a momentary contact, Hayabusa did land and sit on the asteroid surface for about 30 minutes (see timeline below).
Read more about this topic: Hayabusa
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“Every Age has its own peculiar faith.... Any attempt to translate into facts the mission of one Age with the machinery of another, can only end in an indefinite series of abortive efforts. Defeated by the utter want of proportion between the means and the end, such attempts might produce martyrs, but never lead to victory.”
—Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872)