Landing maneuver on Ryugu. Image: JAXA/U. Tokyo/Kochi U./Rikkyo U./Nagoya U./Chiba Inst. Tech./Meiji U./U. Aizu/AIST
ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, future tech, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs.
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Prior to these sample-return missions, our only tangible source of asteroid chunks were meteorites that fortuitously fell to Earth. While falling space rocks have filled crucial gaps in our knowledge of asteroids, they become weathered by Earth’s atmosphere and contaminated by its surface. Plus, the meteorite record is biased toward strong rocks that can survive the trip to the ground in the first place. Samples returned directly from asteroids, in contrast, offer an unfiltered look at these relics, many of which have remained virtually unchanged since the birth of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. The Ryugu particles, as the most uncontaminated samples returned so far, are full of strange surprises and new insights. For instance, Ito and his colleagues note a “puzzling” discrepancy between observations of Ryugu from orbit, which suggested the asteroid belonged to a dehydrated class of rocks called CY chondrites, and the actual samples, which strongly suggest that the rock contains water and is similar to a chemically pristine group called CI-chondrite.
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