The sample was left on Earth by a capsule on December 6 in South Australia. JAXA teams were able to retrieve the capsule where it landed and performed some preliminary gas testing on the capsule before sending it to Japan.
The gas was the first step in helping researchers confirm that the spacecraft successfully collected a sample of Ryugu in 2019 when the spacecraft visited the asteroid.
The researchers confirmed that the gas originated from Ryugu because the analysis of the gas shows that it is different from the atmospheric composition on Earth. Two separate analyzes, one in Australia on December 7 and another between December 10 and 11 at the JAXA Sagamihara Campus Alien Sample Conservation Center, helped the teams achieve the same result.
The gas probably came from the material collected on the surface and below the surface of the asteroid itself.
Researchers will continue to open the capsule containing the sample to understand more about the gas.
The team also confirmed that the black sand grains are also inside the sample container, further confirmation that there is asteroid material in the capsule.
In late 2021, JAXA will share small samples of Ryugu to six teams of scientists from around the world.
Meanwhile, Hayabusa2 continues on its way after flying through Earth in early December to leave the capsule and will visit more asteroids in the future.
Hayabusa2 was launched on December 3, 2014 and reached the asteroid near Earth Ryugu in June 2018. The probe collected a sample of the asteroid’s surface on February 22, 2019 and then launched a copper “bullet” on the asteroid to create a 33-crater impact of wide feet. A sample of this crater was collected on July 11, 2019.
Then, Hayabusa2 left the asteroid in November 2019 and returned to Earth.
In all, mission scientists believe a gram of material was collected, but they can’t be sure until they open it completely.
“One gram may seem small, but for us one gram is huge,” said Masaki Fujimoto, deputy director general of JAXA’s solar system science department, during an online briefing hosted by the Australian Science Media Center. “It’s enough to address our scientific issues.”
The agency’s first Hayabusa mission returned samples of the asteroid Itokawa to Earth in June 2010, but scientists said that due to the failure of the spacecraft’s sampling device, they could only recover micrograms of dust. of the asteroid.
“Ryugu is related to the process that made our planet habitable,” Fujimoto said. “The Earth was born dry; it didn’t start with water. We believe that distant bodies like Ryugu reached the inner part of the solar system, touched the Earth, delivered water and made it habitable. That’s the fundamental question. that we are looking for and that we need samples to solve it “.
Asteroids are like remnants of the formation of our solar system, preserving information about the origins of the planets, as well as the vital elements that allow life to exist on Earth.
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission has recently collected a sample of another asteroid close to Earth, Bennu, which has a similar composition to Ryugu. In fact, based on the first data from the two missions, scientists working on both missions believe that it is possible that these two asteroids belonged to the same larger parent body before being broken by an impact.
The Bennu sample will return to Earth in 2023.
Patrick Michel, research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, is a researcher on both missions.
“It’s really important to realize that no two asteroids are alike,” Michel told CNN in October. “Even if Bennu and Ryugu share some intriguing similarities and belong to the same (primitive) category, they also have very interesting differences. And these samples will occupy generations of researchers, as a lot will be preserved for future generations that they will benefit from the increase in technology and the accuracy of the instruments used to analyze them. “