The best gift of this holiday season came in a small package, parsed into the Australian desert from far inside our Solar System on 5 December 2020.
Inside, astronomers were delighted to remove the first important specimens of a rocky asteroid that is currently 9 million kilometers (5.6 million miles) away, and return to Earth in “perfect” shape. ”.
Pictures of the pristine pebbles have finally been released, and while the tiny grains of black may not look like dirty coal, this galactic gift is hardly a retaliation. This is the culmination of a five-year journey, which requires careful planning and execution.
The samples were first collected by the Japanese mission Hayabusa2, which was sent to a circle and sampled the diamond-shaped asteroid known as Ryugu, after the success of its first mission.
The samples from the Ryugu asteroid in the reintroduction capsule weigh around 5.4g! This is significantly higher than the target yield of 0.1g (the amount required for the first scientific study) set at the time of the Hayabusa2 design.
(Article in Japanese: https://t.co/IZFGinhuFc)– HAYABUSA2 @ JAXA (@ haya2e_jaxa) 18 December 2020
The first Hayabusa spacecraft returned from the asteroid Itokawa in 2010 with the first direct sample of near-Earth material. Overall, the surface material weighed less than a milligram, but that was still enough to provide vital information about the age of the asteroid and geological history.
The new samples from Ryugu – taken last year – go back even further and contain more material than astronomers had hoped, coming in at around 5.4 grams.
The name Ryugu refers to a magical underwater “dragon palace” in Japanese folklore, in which a fisherman finds himself being given a secret box to return home with – similar to the Hayabusa seal capsules.
The treasure in this case is thought to be more than 4.5 billion years old – a reminder of our early Solar System, which contains potentially ancient material created by our sun and its orbiting planets.
Opening the carefully sealed chambers, astronomers have found many grains larger than a millimeter. Those in room C were slightly larger than the rest and were collected from the second round of the mission.
Example of capture chamber A, captured by an optical microscope. (JAXA)
As this landing path came just north of a crack created deliberately in the mission, researchers expected the sample to contain lumps of subterranean material. That would be an accomplishment, because all the other asteroid samples collected in space just come from the surface.
Prior to these direct samples, most of our knowledge of the subject of asteroids came from meteorites, which are asteroids or comets that find themselves breaking into the Earth’s surface.
Unfortunately, without the protection of human capsules, much of this material is destroyed or polluted by the atmosphere of our planet when it enters, not to mention the weather that occurs when these rocks rest on the ground.
Ryugu is a type C asteroid which means its rock is very porous and contains a lot of carbon and water. Astronauts suspect that this dark pile of dark debris was created billions of years ago, when they broke off another huge rock somewhere in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Because the Ryugu surface appears surprisingly dry and features a reddish color, some experts believe it flew closer to the Sun.
However, not all of the material collected in these vessels is as prime. In one of the capsules anachronism is evident (pictured below).
Example of capture chamber C, captured by an optical microscope. (JAZA)
“Artificial intelligence appears to be present in room C,” he read in a press release from the Hayabusa2 project.
“The source is being investigated, but the source is likely to be scraped aluminum off the horn of a spacecraft sampler because the project was fired to wake up material during friction.”
Later, the update from Twitter said the item had not yet been confirmed, but that it may have detached from the sampler horn used at assembly time.
The treatment work for the Ryugu sample is progressive. On December 21, B&C sample capture rooms were opened and then the contents of A&C rooms were transferred to the collection collections pictured. The largest particles in chamber C are about 1 cm! pic.twitter.com/yWO15cKhG9
– HAYABUSA2 @ JAXA (@ haya2e_jaxa) 24 December 2020
Scientists are already beginning to analyze these new samples, including some trapped gas inside the capsules, which is thought to have been collected on the surface of Ryugu as well.
If researchers are right, this is the first gas sample in the world to be returned from a deep place.
Very present indeed.