Tokyo – They look like small pieces of charcoal, but the earth samples were barely collected from an asteroid and returned to Earth by a Japanese spaceship.
The Japanese space officers ’samples described Thursday are as large as 0.4 inches and hard rock, unbroken when lifted or dumped into another spacecraft. Black hedgehogs, smaller sands, the spacecraft collected and returned separately were reported last week.
The spacecraft Hayabusa2 received two sets of samples last year from two locations on the asteroid Ryugu, more than 190 million miles from Earth. He released them from space to target in the Australian Outback, and the samples were taken to Japan in early December.
The sand particles brought by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency last week came from the first spacecraft on the asteroid, in April 2019.
JAXA through AP
The largest fragments from the region allotted for the second city cycle were on Ryugu, said Tomohiro Usui, a space materials scientist.
To obtain a second set of samples last July, Hayabusa2 released an impact machine to explode beneath the surface of the asteroid, collecting material from the crater to prevent it from being affected by space radiation and other environmental factors.
Usui said the size differences suggest different hardness of the subsurface on the asteroid. +
JAXA is continuing with its first study of the asteroid samples ahead of more complete studies next year.
JAXA through AP
Scientists hope the samples will give us an insight into where the solar system and life on Earth came from.
Following studies in Japan, some of the samples will be shared with NASA and other international space agencies for further research.
Hayabusa2, meanwhile, is on an 11-year journey to another short distance, 1998KY26, to study potential defenses against meteorites that may be flying towards Earth.