Hayabusa

The Japanese built a satellite that has intercepted and landed on an asteroid named 25143 Itokawa. It did so mostly autonomously due to to the great distance it had to travel and the resulting communications lag. It successfully landed on the asteroid and retrieved a sample of the asteroid surface and is set to rendezvous with the earth in Jan 2010 to return its sample. In another first the satellite uses Ion engines for propulsion.