A new study by a large group of Japanese scientists who analyzed soil samples from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, which were brought to Earth by the Hayabusa-2 spacecraft, provides a detailed description of the composition of the surface and subsurface materials of this celestial body. As it turns out, Ryugu is covered in "flat and oblong" pebble-like pebbles. An article about this was published in the journal Science.
The Hayabusa-2 spacecraft, which launched from Japan in 2014, arrived at the asteroid in 2018, and in December 2020 it dropped a capsule containing 5.4 g of asteroid material to Earth. This gave researchers the opportunity to study the composition of the asteroid in great detail using the full range of technologies available to them. With the help of an optical microscope, the most detailed pictures of the grains of the substance delivered from Ryugu were taken. To get an idea of what place these samples occupy in the composition of the entire asteroid, scientists compared laboratory materials with data obtained by Hayabusa-2 during the study of the asteroid from orbit. During the 16 months of its stay near the asteroid, the device received many detailed images of Ryugu, including the largest shots during two landing maneuvers.
“We focused on comparing the pebbles photographed by the spacecraft with samples brought to Earth to evaluate the representativeness of the resulting grains collected from selected areas of the asteroid,” lead author Shogo Tachibana of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA and the University of Tokyo explained in an interview with Space.com. - It turned out that the delivered samples reflect the composition of Ryugu quite well from a morphological point of view. These are probably fragments of larger boulders - small pebbles characteristic of the surface of Ryugu.
The flight of Hayabusa-2 is not over yet. After delivering the capsule to Earth on December 5, this probe has embarked on an extended mission and is on its way to another asteroid, (98943) 2001 CC21, which is 700 m across. will travel to a third asteroid, 1998 KY26, where it will arrive in 2031. However, no more soil samples are planned to be delivered to Earth.
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