Japanese probe's asteroid Ryugu encounter hints at space rock's dynamic history

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Japanese probe's asteroid Ryugu encounter hints at space rock's dynamic history

 

 

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Japanese probe's asteroid Ryugu encounter hints at space rock's dynamic history

 

A Japanese spacecraft is piecing together the story of a near-Earth asteroid.

 

A Japanese spacecraft trekking across the solar system has yet to deliver its precious cargo of space rocks back to Earth, but its data is already giving scientists a preview of a near-Earth asteroid's

 

dynamic history.

 

Must see  https://www.space.com/asteroid-ryugu-sun-encounter-hayabusa2-spacecraft-footage.html?jwsource=cl

 

 

The spacecraft is Hayabusa2, which arrived at an asteroid called Ryugu in the summer of 2018 and spent 16 months orbiting the asteroid. During its extended visit, Hayabusa2 dropped three

 

rovers onto the asteroid and scooped some samples from the space rock's surface.

 

The probe is already on its way back to Earth to deliver the samples to eager scientists affiliated with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission. But while the shipment won't arrive

 

until December, scientists are getting a head start by studying data gathered during Hayabusa2's operations at the asteroid's surface, and they have realized that Ryugu has had quite a dynamic

 

history.

 

Right now, Ryugu is orbiting the sun at a distance somewhere between the orbits of Earth and Mars. But the new research suggests that at some point in the past, the asteroid darted awfully close

 

to the sun and dramatically warmed, permanently changing Ryugu's appearance.

 

The research began with the February 2019 sampling maneuver, which Hayabusa2 carefully filmed to tell personnel at JAXA how the operation went. That footage was very detailed, and once it

 

arrived, scientists eagerly watched it — and soon they spotted something strange.

 

"The thruster jet lifted up rocks and particles of Ryugu's surface, and the surface was greatly altered," Tomokatsu Morota, a planetary scientist at the University of Tokyo and lead author on the

 

new research, told Space.com in an email. "It is interesting that the asteroid's surface, which was not expected to change significantly on geological time scales, can easily be changed by a

 

spacecraft landing."

 

Some of the disturbed material consisted of large rocks, but most of it was tiny dust particles, which spread out up to 16 feet (5 meters) away from the sampling site. And as the scientists looked

 

even more closely at the footage, they realized something else about the surface disturbance: the particles that were affected by the landing were also quite dark.

 

In fact, the particles seemed to match one of the two types of materials scientists had seen from aerial surveys of Ryugu, a material that looks a bit reddish to scientific instruments. Curiously, that

 

material seemed to form stripes against bluer material found at the asteroid's poles and midline.

 

Hayabusa2's scientists were careful to direct the spacecraft to collect rock from a location where it should have captured samples of both materials, so once the souvenirs arrive the team should

 

be able to learn much more about them.

 

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