#hayabusa-2

[darkenergyslivers]

Surface of Asteroid RYUGU taken at night by Hayabusa-2. Stars are visible in the background. [via u/marktwin11 at r/spaceporn]

[oldschoolsciencefiction]

Asteroid capsule located in Australian desert

A recovery team has found a capsule carrying the first significant quantities of rock from an asteroid.

The capsule from Japan’s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft containing samples from the asteroid Ryugu has been found.

[therealuniverse]

The Surface of an Asteroid in Color The Japanese Hayabusa-2 spacecraft orbited the small asteroid Ryugu for several years, touched down on its surface, collected samples, and is currently on its way back to Earth to deliver them. The spacecraft also carried a camera with multiple colored LED lights, and while it was down collecting samples it also captured this photo with those lights turned on. This, therefore, is a color image of the surface of an asteroid. The field of view is likely a couple meters across.

The asteroid Ryugu is a near-earth asteroid, about 1 kilometer wide. As you can tell from this image, its surface is particularly rocky and dark. It’s thought to be made mostly of carbonaceous material – similar components are seen in some meteorites, although without returned samples it’s hard to match meteorites to asteroids exactly. Based on what has been seen in meteorites, the dark material likely contains reduced carbon (graphite) and that is the source of some of the dark color. It likely also contains materials that were altered by or contain water. This rocky surface likely started as part of an asteroid where the materials solidified and formed into rocks, and eventually that surface was shattered by impacts. Ryugu as seen today was then pulled together by gravity out of the boulders and grains floating in space, creating a small rubble-pile asteroid, made of carbonaceous chondritic material. -JBB Image credit: JAXA https://www.planetary.org/space-images/ryugus-surface-from-mascot-1

[earthstory]

This sequence of photos was taken by the Japanese Hayabusa-2 spacecraft as it approached, touched down on, and fired a projectile into the surface of asteroid Ryugu last week. The debris shot upwards by the projectile was the goal of the mission; they spacecraft is trying to sample that material. The video is sped up by a factor of 5. -JBB

[couleurlocale]

hayabusa-2 replied to your link: Modern Istennők Edzőtábora

Az mi?

Meg kellett gugliznom nekem is, kérlek self-love coach!

[therealuniverse]

Ryugu’s healed sunburn This is the asteroid Ryugu, a 900 meter in diameter pile of boulders that was recently orbited and sampled by the Japanese Hayabusa-2 Spacecraft. Although the samples of that mission have not yet returned, observations of the surface by the spacecraft’s spectrometers have revealed something interesting about its history. At some point over the last few million years, Ryugu’s orbit changed to bring it closer to the sun, but then its orbit was changed again and it scattered back out in the solar system closer to Earth.

The key to this observation is called “Space weathering”. When rocks and dust are exposed to the sun’s radiation environment, some of the material right at the surface breaks down as the mineral structures are destroyed by high-energy cosmic rays and by micrometeorite impacts. This weathering is known from lunar rocks, and has the effect of making the material look more “Red” to spectrometers. When space weathering happens, it should only occur right at the surface – the outermost millimeter of the asteroid, because all the cosmic rays are absorbed right there. However, Ryugu has a moderately sized crater that has exposed material on the walls, Hayabusa-2 landed on one spot and its engines scattered surface dust. and Hayabusa-2 also fired an experimental bullet into the asteroid to create a small crater of its own. In all cases, darker reddened material was observed deeper in Ryugu, away from the surface layer. The science team suggests this tells us a portion of Ryugu’s history. First, at some point in recent history, Ryugu must have voyaged closer to the sun, creating a layer of intense space weathering at the surface. Then, Ryugu’s orbit changed again, taking it back out to the Earth’s orbit and slowing the space weathering rate. After this happened, tiny impacts with micrometeorites began reworking the surface, pushing some of the highly-weathered material deeper into the asteroid, where it is found today. Based on the depths to this layer, the scientists estimated that Ryugu’s voyage near the sun lasted 1 million years or less, took it in near the orbit of Mercury, and the most likely possibility is that it happened around 9 million years ago – but that needs to be confirmed with the samples once they are returned by the spacecraft later this year. -JBB Image credits: https://eos.org/articles/sunburned-surface-reveals-asteroid-formation-and-orbital-secrets Original Paper: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6491/654

[thepastisalreadywritten]

The surface of the asteroid Ryugu taken by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa-2. That pitch black background is so scary.

—

162173 Ryugu, provisional designation 1999 JU3, is a near-Earth object and a potentially hazardous asteroid of the Apollo group.

It measures approximately 900 metres (3,000 ft) in diameter and is a dark object of the rare spectral type Cb, with qualities of both a C-type asteroid and a B-type asteroid.

On 27 June 2018, the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 arrived at the asteroid.

After making measurements and taking samples, Hayabusa2 left Ryugu for Earth on 13 November 2019 and returned the sample capsule to Earth on 5 December 2020.

The samples showed the presence of organic compounds, such as uracil (one of the four components in RNA) and vitamin B3.

[awidevastdominion]

A picture of the surface of the asteroid Ryugu taken by Japan’s spacecraft, Hayabusa-2, in 2018.