Samples of the asteroid Ryugu contain bits of stardust that predate the birth of our solar system.
Finding these fragments “is really unique,” says cosmochemist Ann Nguyen of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “It’s showing us a new type of material, but also telling us about the dynamics of material from the outer solar system.”
The Hayabusa2 spacecraft visited the asteroid in 2018 and 2019, then returned to Earth with 5.4 grams of the space rock in 2020 (SN: 12/7/20). Scientists examined those samples in the lab in ways that can’t be done with telescopes or even spacecraft, like getting detailed measurements of chemical composition.
So far, those examinations have shown that Ryugu is rich in carbon, that it’s made of the same material as some of the rarest meteorites found on Earth, and that it was altered by water at some point in its past (SN: 6/9/22). Scientists think that Ryugu formed from the debris of a larger asteroid, which broke up in a collision and re-formed into a loose pile of rubble (SN: 3/20/19).
2023-07-14 13:00:00
Article from www.sciencenews.org