Ito and his colleagues have found that the abundances of heavy hydrogen and nitrogen in the asteroid are consistent with an origin in the outer Solar System; that is, Ryugu started its life much farther from the Sun.
"In this study we demonstrate that [carbonaceous] meteorites, despite their geochemical importance as proxies of the bulk Solar System composition, are terrestrially contaminated samples," the researchers wrote in their paper.The evidence presented here shows that Ryugu particles are undoubtedly among the most uncontaminated Solar System materials available for laboratory study and ongoing investigations of these precious samples will certainly expand our understanding of early Solar System processes."