Japan’s HTV resupply spacecraft recently showed off a new feature – the HTV Small Re-Entry Capsule. The resupply vehicle is built to deliver cargo the astronauts aboard the International Space Station, whether pressurized or in a vacuum, but this new vehicle allows small amounts of cargo to be returned from the orbiting science lab to the Earth without hitching a ride on the US-built Dragon or the Russian Soyuz vehicles. This gives them incredible capabilities for science return. The flight that demonstrated this new addition, Kounotori 7, was supplied with a cargo of protein crystals grown inside the zero-gravity laboratory. The transfer vehicle as a whole arrived at the station after a launch from Japan on the 22nd of September. After staying berthed for 41 days, the vehicle was released and commanded to execute a deorbit burn, firing its engines retrograde to initiate a perigee drop. Once the vehicle had dropped to 300 kilometers, it was commanded to release the small reentry capsule, which used nitrogen-gas thrusters to maintain control until splashdown and recovery on the 10th of November. The capsule was successfully recovered and the protein crystals were flown back to an Earthly laboratory, proving a success for the engineers at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) approaching the International Space Station.

Sources:

https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-20/hires/iss020e041380.jpg

https://www.space.com/42422-japanese-space-capsule-prototype-survives-reentry.html