[ad_1]
The Hayabusa2 capsule that landed in the desert of South Australia.Credit: AP / Shutterstock
Japan’s mission to return asteroid dust to Earth has been successful. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) confirmed on December 14 that a capsule from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft, which landed in the Australian desert last week, contained black grains from the asteroid Ryugu.
“The confirmation of the sample is a very important milestone for us and for JAXA,” says Yuichi Tsuda, mission project manager at JAXA in Sagamihara.
JAXA said in a statement that they observed the sandy material at the entrance to the collection chamber, but have yet to look inside to see if there is more asteroid dust lurking there. It’s only the second time that scientists have returned material from an asteroid.
The Ryugu samples could provide researchers with important information about the early evolution of planets and help explain the origins of water on Earth.1,2.
“Samples containing valuable asteroid material will provide scientists with key information about the formation of the Solar System,” says Ed Kruzins, director of the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, who helped track down the spaceship and its encounter with Ryugu.
The capsule journey
In the early hours of December 6, a brilliant fireball tore through the southern skies and landed in the South Australian desert, triggering a race to locate the capsule that scientists hoped would contain material from Ryugu.
“The images Hayabusa2 took during its landing operations made us confident that the spacecraft collected samples from Ryugu,” Satoru Nakazawa, deputy mission director, wrote in an email while in Woomera, Australia. But the team couldn’t know for sure until they disassembled the capsule and saw the dark powder.
About 57 hours after the capsule was located, the team returned it to Japan. The expedited shipment “means that the samples we got from Ryugu are very pure with no contamination from Earth’s atmosphere and we confirmed that there were no leaks,” says Yuichi Tsuda, project manager for the mission at JAXA in Sagamihara.
Plans for samples
Once the capsule is fully open, possibly later today, JAXA scientists will measure the mass of the materials and study their composition and structure. They expect to have collected at least 0.1 grams of material, says Yoshikawa Makoto, Hayabusa2 mission manager at JAXA.
About 10% of the material will be sent to NASA in December 2021 in exchange for samples from the asteroid Bennu, which the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft collected in October and should reach Earth by the end of 2023. Another 15% will be available for international researchers. and about 40% will be stored for future scientists to research.
Hayabusa2 collected the samples during a year and a half of poking and prodding Ryugu, a small asteroid shaped like a squashed sphere, dotted with giant rocks.3. Ryugu is a C-type, or carbon-rich, asteroid that scientists believe contains organic and hydrated minerals that have been preserved for 4.6 billion years.4. The samples could help explain how the Earth became covered in water. Scientists believe that it occurred in asteroids or similar planetary bodies in the outer regions of the Solar System.
Tsuda is interested in finding out if the samples contain more complex organic material, similar to those found on Earth. “If we find very complicated organic compounds in Ryugu, that’s a very important finding.”
Hayabusa2 has now begun its 11-year journey to its next destination: a rapidly rotating asteroid known as 1998 KY26. To reach it, the spacecraft will pass another asteroid, 2001 CC21, and will pass in front of Earth another two times.
