[ad_1]
A Japanese space probe will launch a capsule containing two samples from the 4.6 billion-year-old asteroid Ryugu onto Earth on Saturday, as scientists await the arrival of materials that could help explain the origin of life.
The capsule, to be released by Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hayabusa2 space probe, will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere early Sunday before landing in a southern Australian desert, according to JAXA.
The attached photo shows an image of the Hayabusa2 space explorer releasing its capsule. (Photo courtesy of JAXA) (Kyodo)
The specimens, estimated to weigh one gram in total, include the world’s first subsurface asteroid sample. Scientists hope that primordial materials will help conduct more research on the origin of life on Earth and the evolution of the solar system.
After landing, a JAXA recovery team will search a region within the Woomera Forbidden Area, several hundred square kilometers long, to collect the capsule.
Once located, the capsule will be taken to a “quick review facility” at an Australian Defense Force facility in Woomera to analyze the gases that may have been emitted by the asteroid material, according to Masaki Fujimoto, deputy director general of the Institute. of JAXA Space and Astronautical Science.
“We seal the capsule very tightly, but still gas samples can be easily lost,” Fujimoto said at a news conference on Friday.
“We don’t want to miss anything, so as soon as the capsule returns to the headquarters building, we can extract the gas sample so that the best science can be obtained from the precious sample that we returned from asteroid Ryugu,” he said.
If gases are detected, Fujimoto said it is a positive, albeit unofficial, sign that the asteroid samples were collected successfully.
The capsule itself will not be opened in Australia, but will instead fly to Japan for further analysis.
The asteroid Ryugu is a carbonaceous or C-type asteroid, which is believed to have undergone minimal change since the formation of the early solar system and is therefore an example of the types of meteorites that may have struck early Earth.
Scientists believe that at the beginning of Earth’s formation, the planet was too close to the sun for the water to condense. Once the planet cooled down, Ryugu-like meteorites delivered water and organic substances to Earth, making the planet habitable.
“It really shows the miracle of how life exists on this planet, so it is a rich question, and this is a little first step in answering that rich question, but someone has to do it, and we are really proud to be the one.” Fujimoto said.
The Hayabusa2 space probe was launched from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center in December 2014 and arrived at Ryugu in June 2018.
Hayabusa2 made two landings on Ryugu despite the asteroid’s unexpected rocky surface.
During the first landing in February 2019, the probe collected a surface sample from Ryugu. The second landing in July of the same year saw the probe collect the first samples from an asteroid’s subsurface after creating an artificial crater by firing a copper projectile at the asteroid.
The two samples will provide scientists with an above and below surface comparison, as the materials below the asteroid’s surface will not have experienced the same weathering and potential contamination from other meteorite impacts.
Hayabusa2 will not return to Earth, but will continue on an extended mission to explore another distant asteroid called 1998KY26.
[ad_2]
