Commissioned by Sagamihara High School Wind Orchestra and premiered at their 40th annual concert.

I wanted to write a piece about Sagamihara, Kanagawa, a Japanese space science research hub. I visited The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and saw an interesting exhibit of its history and past projects.

I was fascinated by JAXA's Hayabusa Project, a grand mission to launch a rocket called M-V (Mu Five) to send the probe Hayabusa into space to collect samples from an asteroid, and then return to Earth. In fact, it was not an immediate success. The launch of the rocket failed several times, and the fifth rocket finally reached the asteroid.

En route, though, it endured the largest solar flare in observation history, which caused the solar panels to deteriorate, and there were times when communication was lost and the return to Earth was threatened. Hayabusa overcame these difficulties and returned safely to Earth seven years after its launch. The success story of Hayabusa is filled with thoughts and feelings of many people, and I wrote to express those sentiments through music.

It portrays the launch, drifting through space, various hardships, the beauty of the earth as seen from space, and the moving scene of the rocket entering the atmosphere and returning to earth with a dazzling light like a shooting star.

(Tomohito Matsushita)