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Asteroid Ryugu was once part of a much larger parent body, new results find - Ars Technica

Asteroid Ryugu was once part of a much larger parent body, new results find - Ars Technica

Asteroid Ryugu was once part of a much larger parent body, new results find - Ars Technica
Sep 26, 2022 1 min, 12 secs

The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 returned to Earth in December 2020 bearing soil samples collected from a nearby asteroid, 162173 Ryugu.

The results of the first year of analysis of those samples appeared in a new paper published in the journal Science and included the detection of a precious drop of water embedded in a crystal.

These findings suggest that Ryugu was once part of a much larger asteroid that formed out of various materials some two million years after our Solar System (some 4.5 billion years ago).

Hayabusa2 has been in space since 2014, and it slowly made its way to an orbit 20 km above the surface of the asteroid Ryugu.

Hayabusa2 collected surface samples by snuggling up to the asteroid and shooting it.

Then Hayabusa2 fired a bullet into the asteroid's surface, blasting material loose that was gathered by the horn and stored for return to Earth.

Last month, one team of researchers published the results of their analysis of dust samples from Ryugu in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, concluding that some of those grains of dust are older than our Solar System.

The age of the grains in their dust can be identified and dated by their isotopic signatures, and the team compared the Ryugu dust samples to grains found in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites that have been found on Earth.

The Ryugu dust sample held grains identical to others that have been seen in some of those meteorites that predate our Solar System.

Summarized by 365NEWSX ROBOTS

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