WOOMERA, AUSTRALIA – The Japanese space agency said Sunday the capsule from its Hayabusa2 space probe was collected from the Australian desert in "perfect condition," hopefully containing samples from the Ryugu asteroid that could help explain the origins of life.
The capsule appeared as a bright fireball lasting several dozen seconds as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere before dawn, its protective heat shield glowing as it reached temperatures of approximately 3,000 degrees Celsius.
If the mission was successful, the capsule will contain two samples from the Ryugu asteroid, including the first subsurface asteroid sample ever collected. Scientists believe that organic matter and water existed on the asteroid when the solar system was created around 4.6 billion years ago.
"The capsule was in perfect condition. We're looking forward to opening it up," Yuichi Tsuda, Hayabusa2 project manager at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), said at a news conference.
The deputy director general of JAXA's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Masaki Fujimoto, said during the same news conference that once collected from the desert, the capsule was carried by hand into a so-called quick-look facility to be cleaned and dismantled so the interior sample container could be exposed.
An analysis of the gases that may have been emitted from the asteroid material is expected to begin Monday.
Fujimoto said the team in Australia is anxious to perform the analysis as the presence of gases within the sample container would indicate that the asteroid samples were successfully collected.
Scientists hope primordial material believed to be contained in the samples will help further research into the origins of life on Earth and the evolution of the solar system.
The capsule, which was released from the space probe Saturday afternoon, landed in a desert near the Woomera Prohibited Area, a remote Australian military and civil aerospace facility that is also one of the largest land-based test ranges in the world.
The Hayabusa2 space probe made two landings on Ryugu to collect samples.
The first landing, in February 2019, saw the probe collect a surface sample from the asteroid. The second sample, collected in July the same year, is the first-ever subsurface sample from an asteroid and was extracted after an artificial crater was created by firing a copper projectile into the surface.
The two samples will provide scientists with a comparison of the composition of the asteroid above and below the surface.
Although Ryugu is believed to have undergone minimal change since the formation of the early solar system, scientists say materials below the asteroid's surface would not have experienced the same weathering and potential contamination from other meteorite impacts as those on the surface.
At the beginning of Earth's formation, the planet was entirely without water due to its close proximity to the sun. Scientists believe that once Earth cooled, water and organic matter were delivered to it by meteorites with a composition similar to Ryugu.
JAXA's recovery mission is being supported by the Australian Space Agency, which was established in July 2018 to develop the country's space industry.
"This is certainly our first joint (operation), where we're working on a mission with another country," agency head Megan Clark said in an interview. "It's quite exciting for us and exciting for our team to be able to support Japan."
"Also, we're learning a lot through all this. We're learning a lot for when we're the ones who are nervous because it will be our mission," Clark said.
The Hayabusa2 space probe was launched from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center in December 2014 and has traveled over 5 billion kilometers so far.
Unlike the original Hayabusa mission, the Hayabusa2 space probe will not return to Earth. Instead, it will continue on an extended mission to explore asteroid 1998KY26.
While the Hayabusa2 mission has so far proceeded smoothly, the coronavirus pandemic significantly disrupted JAXA's plans for the capsule recovery operation.
Travel restrictions have seen a reduced team of only 79 essential personnel making the trip to Australia from Japan.
Additionally, the team went through quarantine twice — once in Japan and again when they arrived in Australia. However, an unexpected coronavirus outbreak in the state of South Australia, where Woomera is located, saw the entire state go into a mandatory six-day lockdown, delaying preparations further.
Knowing that the team from Japan would be in isolation for two weeks on their arrival in Australia, Clark said the agency put together a "welcome pack" of local South Australian wines, sweets and hand creams for their colleagues.
"It's hard to do isolation, so we were just providing little gifts and food, and making sure they had everything they needed, so they didn't feel alone," she said.
Quelle: The Japan Times
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Asteroid Ryugu Dust Delivered to Earth; NASA Astrobiologists Prepare to Probe It
On Dec. 6 local time (Dec. 5 in the United States), Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 dropped a capsule to the ground of the Australian Outback from about 120 miles (or 200 kilometers) above Earth’s surface. Inside that capsule is some of the most precious cargo in the solar system: dust that the spacecraft collected earlier this year from the surface of asteroid Ryugu.
By the close of 2021, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, will disperse samples of Ryugu to six teams of scientists around the globe. These researchers will prod, heat, and inspect these ancient grains to learn more about their origins.
Among the teams of Ryugu investigators will be scientists from the Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Researchers in the astrobiology lab use cutting-edge instruments that are similar to those used in forensic labs to solve crimes. Instead of solving crimes, though, NASA Goddard scientists probe space rocks for molecular evidence that can help them piece together the history of the early solar system.
“What we’re trying to do is better understand how Earth evolved into what it is today,” said Jason P. Dworkin, director of the Goddard’s Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory. “How, from a disk of gas and dust that coalesced around our forming Sun, did we get to life on Earth and possibly elsewhere?” Dworkin serves as the international deputy of a global team that will probe a sample of Ryugu in search of organic compounds that are precursors to life on Earth.
Ryugu is an ancient fragment of a larger asteroid that formed in the cloud of gas and dust that spawned our solar system. It is an intriguing type of asteroid that’s rich in carbon, which is an element essential to life.
When Dworkin and his team receive their share of a Ryugu sample next summer, they will look for organic compounds, or carbon-based compounds, in order to better understand how these compounds first formed and spread throughout the solar system.
Organic compounds of interest to astrobiologists include amino acids, which are molecules that make up the hundreds of thousands of proteins responsible for powering some of life’s most essential functions, such as making new DNA. By studying the differences in the types and amounts of amino acids preserved in space rocks scientists can build a record of how these molecules formed.
Dust from Ryugu, which is currently 9 million miles, or 15 million kilometers, from Earth, will be among the most immaculately preserved space material scientists have laid hands on. It’s only the second sample of an asteroid that has ever been collected in space and returned to Earth.
Before the Ryugu delivery, JAXA brought back tiny samples of asteroid Itokawa in 2010 as part of the first asteroid sampling mission in history. Prior to that, in 2006, NASA obtained a small sample from comet Wild-2 as part of its Stardust mission. And next, in 2023, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx will return at least a dozen ounces, or hundreds of grams, of the asteroid Bennu, which has been traveling through space and largely unaltered for billions of years.
“Our final objective is to understand how organic compounds formed in the extraterrestrial environment,” said Hiroshi Naraoka, professor of geochemistry at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, and the lead of the global Hayabusa2 team that will analyze Ryugu’s organic composition. “So we want to analyze many organic compounds, including amino acids, sulfur compounds, and nitrogen compounds, to build a story of the types of organic synthesis that happens in asteroids.”
After analyzing the makeup of Ryugu, scientists will get to compare it to Bennu, the site of a wildly successful sample grab by OSIRIS-REx, which briefly touched down on the asteroid’s surface on Oct. 20.
“The two asteroids have similar shapes, but Bennu appears to have a lot more evidence of past water and of organic compounds,” said Dworkin, whose lab also is due to receive a tenth of an ounce, or several grams, of Bennu. “It’ll be very interesting to see how they compare, given they came from different parent bodies in the asteroid belt and have different histories.”
Analyzing Asteroid Particles Takes a Lot of Practice
Analyzing Ryugu dust will be one of the most demanding projects Goddard astrochemists have tackled. They will have to work with a miniscule amount of sample. Hayabusa2 is expected to have collected no more than a few grams of dust (that’s about six coffee beans!) from Ryugu, although this is much more material than was returned from Itokawa. This tiny amount will be dispersed among many scientists, which means Dworkin and his colleagues will get only a fraction of the original sample — slightly more than a typical snowflake.
“We’ll be dealing with much smaller sample allotments than we typically work with when we analyze meteorites,” said Eric T. Parker, a Goddard astrochemist who works with Dworkin.
Parker said that the Goddard team, in collaboration with international colleagues, has been practicing working with tiny samples for more than a year. For example, they’ve analyzed dust grains from a carbon-rich meteorite called Murchison. Then, they used the identical technique to analyze a sample without any extraterrestrial material in it to make sure they could tell the difference between the two.
After Goddard scientists receive Ryugu dust, they will suspend the particles in a water solution inside a glass tube. They will then heat the solution to the temperature of boiling water, or 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius), for 24 hours in an attempt to extract any organic compounds that can dissolve in water.
The researchers will run the solution through powerful analytical machines that will separate the molecules inside by shape and mass and identify each kind.
“With really precious samples like Ryugu, of course you think, ‘I hope this test tube doesn’t break,’ or ‘I hope this reaction goes correctly,’” said Hannah L. McLain, a Goddard researcher on Dworkin’s Ryugu analysis team. “But at this point, we’ve fully established our technique to be sure nothing can go wrong and we are excited to analyze the real sample.”
Banner image caption: Artist's concept of a NASA spacecraft speeding toward a rendezvous with an asteroid. Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Download image here.
Find out how NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will receive and process dust from Ryugu and prepare it for analysis by labs around the world.
Quelle: NASA
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Update: 9.12.2020
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Hayabusa2’s asteroid dirt may hold clues to the early solar system
After landing safely on Earth, a capsule holding samples from Ryugu is in Japan for analysis
Hayabusa2’s sample return capsule was located in south Australia shortly before dawn local time on December 6. A helicopter crew found it with its parachute draped over a tree.
JAXA
For the first time, scientists are about to get their (carefully gloved) hands on asteroid dirt so old it may contain clues to how our solar system formed and how water got to Earth.
A capsule containing two smidgens of dirt from asteroid Ryugu arrived in Japan on December 7, where researchers will finally get a chance to measure how much was collected. The goal of Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission was to collect at least 100 milligrams of both surface and subsurface material, and send it back to Earth.
“Hayabusa2 is home,” said project manager Yuichi Tsuda of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, at a news conference December 6, hours after the sample return capsule landed successfully in Woomera, Australia. “We collected the treasure box.”
Ryugu is an ancient, carbon-rich asteroid with the texture of freeze-dried coffee (SN: 3/16/20). Planetary scientists think it contains some of the earliest solids to form in the solar system, making it a time capsule of solar system history.
Hayabusa2 explored Ryugu from June 2018 to November 2019, and grabbed two samples of the asteroid (SN: 2/22/19). One came from inside an artificial crater that Hayabusa2 blasted into the asteroid’s surface, giving the spacecraft access to the asteroid’s interior (SN: 4/5/19). On December 4, the spacecraft released the sample return capsule from about 220,000 kilometers above Earth’s surface. The capsule created a brilliant fireball as it streaked through Earth’s atmosphere.
At a “quick look facility” in Woomera, gases the asteroid material may have emitted were initially analyzed. But the capsule won’t be opened until after it reaches the JAXA center in Sagamihara, Japan.
Hayabusa2 is the second mission to successfully return an asteroid sample to Earth. The first Hayabusa mission visited stony asteroid Itokawa and returned to Earth in 2010. Engineering and logistical problems meant that its return was years later than planned, and it grabbed only 1,534 grains of asteroid material (SN: 6/14/10).
For Hayabusa2, though, everything seems to have gone according to plan. The spacecraft itself still has enough fuel to visit another asteroid, 1998 KY26, which is smaller and spins faster than Ryugu. It will study how such asteroids might have formed, how they hold themselves together, and what might happen if one collided with Earth. The spacecraft will reach that asteroid in July 2031, although it won’t take any more samples.
Quelle: ScienceNews
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Hayabusa2 Capsule Arrives at JAXA Facility in Japan
A capsule delivered by the Hayabusa2 unmanned probe that is believed to contain sand samples from asteroid Ryugu arrived at the Sagamihara Campus of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, in Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, on Tuesday, after being retrieved in Australia.
The capsule will be opened at a special analysis facility and observed and analyzed with a microscope and other devices for around six months.
A truck carrying the capsule arrived at the campus at around 10:30 a.m. (1:30 a.m. GMT).
Project manager Yuichi Tsuda said: "I'm relieved. I'd like to say to Hayabusa2 that it did a great job to finish its 'errand.'"
If the capsule contains sand, it will be the first time that such material has been retrieved from a space rock since the first Hayabusa brought back sand from asteroid Itokawa in 2010.
Quelle: nippon.com
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Hayabusa2 capsule taken to JAXA lab
A capsule released by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's space probe Hayabusa2 arrived at a lab near Tokyo, Japan on Tuesday. Officials held a news conference during which they thanked the public for warmly welcoming back the capsule.
The capsule is believed to contain samples from the Ryugu asteroid. It was retrieved after landing in an Australian desert on Sunday and arrived at Haneda Airport in Tokyo on Tuesday morning.
Tsuda Yuichi, the project manager of Hayabusa2, said he was touched when he realized that the capsule had traveled more than 5 billion kilometers.
Kuninaka Hitoshi, the head of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, said that the coronavirus pandemic forced them to briefly consider postponing the return of the capsule.
But he said they succeeded as a result of their determination to continue despite the circumstances. He also said they hope to analyze the samples thoroughly in order to derive as much scientific value from them as possible.
Analysis of the samples, which could provide clues on the origin of life, is expected to start in June.
Japan space agency confirms asteroid soil inside capsule
Japan’s space agency says it has confirmed the presence of black soil samples inside a capsule that the spacecraft Hayabusa2 brought back from a distant asteroid last week
TOKYO -- Japan’s space agency said Monday it has confirmed the presence of black soil samples inside a capsule that the spacecraft Hayabusa2 brought back from a distant asteroid last week.
The pan-shaped capsule, 40 centimeters (15 inches) in diameter, was dropped by Hayabusa2 from space onto a spot in a sparsely populated Australian desert on Dec. 6. It arrived in Japan last Tuesday for research that will hopefully provide insights into the origins of the solar system and life on Earth.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said its scientists opened the capsule and found an unspecified amount of sandy black particles.
"It's obviously from Ryugu,(asterisk) the asteroid, JAXA said in a statement.
JAXA said it will continue an initial examination ahead of fuller studies of the samples later.
The samples were gathered from touchdowns that Hayabusa2 made last year on Ryugu, more than 300 million kilometers (190 million miles) from Earth. The landings were more difficult than expected because of the asteroid's extremely rocky surface.
The first landing collected samples from Ryugu's surface and the second from underground. Each was stored separately.
Scientists are hoping the asteroid’s subsurface samples can provide information from billions of years ago unaffected by space radiation and other environmental factors. JAXA scientists say they are particularly interested in organic materials in the samples to learn about how they were distributed in the solar system and if they are related to life on Earth.
Following studies in Japan for about a year, some of the samples will be shared with NASA and other international groups for additional research beginning in 2022.
Quelle: abcNews
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Hayabusa-2: Pieces of an asteroid found inside space capsule
Scientists have been greeted by the sight of jet black chunks of rock and soil from an asteroid after opening a capsule that returned from deep space a week ago.
It's the first significant sample of material to be delivered to Earth from a space rock and was grabbed last year by Japan's Hayabusa-2 spacecraft.
Researchers began opening the capsule on Monday (GMT) in Sagamihara, Japan.
The material was retrieved from an asteroid called Ryugu.
Hayabusa-2 reached the object in June 2018; it is believed to be one of the building blocks left over from the formation of the Solar System.
Scientists at the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) curation facility at Sagamihara have now opened one of three sample chambers inside the capsule.
This was hoped to contain particles of rock and soil from Hayabusa-2's first touchdown on the asteroid in 2019. The spacecraft grabbed the material by firing a tantalum metal bullet into the surface and letting debris float up a collection tube under the low gravity.
Scientists had already been excited when they saw black grains from the asteroid caught at the entrance to the sample catcher (where the material is stored) on Monday. And they were not disappointed when they opened it: Inside was material ranging in size from pebbles to tiny particles of dust.
'Pristine material'
However, this is just one of three chambers inside the capsule. Sample chamber B should be empty, but chamber C is thought to hold material collected from beneath Ryugu's surface.
Scientists wanted to collect pristine material from Ryugu that had not been altered by exposure to the environment of space - including its radiation - for aeons. In order to do this, they had to use an explosive charge to propel a copper projectile into the surface of the asteroid.
This blasted a 20m-wide crater in Ryugu, allowing Hayabusa-2 to descend into the crater and grab the pristine particles, depositing them in chamber C.
Scientists should open this chamber in due course.
Jaxa has also announced that gas collected from the capsule is from the asteroid.
IMAGE COPYRIGHTJAXAIt was likely to have been liberated by the soil collected from Ryugu and is the world's first sample of gas returned from deep space.
Asteroids are leftover building materials from the formation of the Solar System. They're made of the same stuff that went into making rocky worlds like the Earth, but they continued to roam free, rather than being incorporated into planets.
Ryugu belongs to a particularly primitive class of space rock known as a C-type (or carbonaceous) asteroid.
In the early Solar System, such objects could have delivered much of the Earth's water along with the ingredients necessary for life to get started.
When the spacecraft arrived at its target in 2018, scientists were surprised by just how dark Ryugu was. Its unexpected hue even forced controllers to adjust the laser altitude sensor used when the spacecraft approached the asteroid's surface.
The Hayabusa-2 sample capsule returned to Earth on Saturday 5 December, parachuting down safely in the Australian desert near Woomera.
Quelle: BBC
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JAXA: Black sand grains from asteroid Ryugu found in Hayabusa2 capsule
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced Monday that it has found black sand grains from the asteroid Ryugu in the capsule ejected from the Hayabusa2 space probe.
With the preliminary discovery, the most crucial mission of Hayabusa2 to bring back to Earth samples from the asteroid — a six-year, 5.24 billion-kilometer journey — has been proved successful.
This is the second such accomplishment, following the 2010 mission by the first Hayabusa spacecraft.
Hayabusa2 successfully landed on the surface of Ryugu in February and July 2019. The capsule was believed to contain samples of sand and rocks, among others, that flew up off the surface during the landing.
According to JAXA, the capsule has a two-layer structure, and the black grains of sand were found on the bottom of the container outside the small box to hold samples.
The amount is yet unknown, but it is enough to be visible, making it highly likely that a much larger amount of samples than the first mission was collected
JAXA will scrutinize the amount of the samples collected. It will record the colors, shapes and sizes among other aspects of the samples in a six-month study, before starting an extended analysis on them at universities and research institutes across Japan around June next year.
The samples from Ryugu are believed to contain organic matter and water that can be ingredients for life, and the analysis is expected to provide clues to the history of the solar system and the origin of life.
Quelle: The Yomiuri Shimbun
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Update; 18.12.2020
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Asteroid explorer collects first samples thought to be rich in organic compounds; a Purdue scientist will be among the first to study
Thompson holds a sample of a carbonaceous meteorite which may have similarities to material returned by the Hayabusa2 mission. (Purdue University photo/John Underwood)
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A fireball lit up the Australian sky in the first week of December, as Japan’s Hayabusa2 asteroid explorer sent a capsule containing pieces of nearby asteroid Ryugu down to the Earth’s surface.
The capsule and its cargo were met with international cheers, including those of Michelle Thompson, a Purdue scientist who will be one of the first researchers in the world to study the samples. Thompson, professor of planetary sciences, was recruited to the Hayabusa2 science team to study the composition and molecular structure of materials returned from the asteroid.
Researchers believe that the surface of asteroid Ryugu contains organic molecules. This is only the second successful return of an asteroid sample to date, and it is the first successful retrieval from a carbon-bearing asteroid. The first asteroid sample was collected from a stony-type asteroid named Itokawa, completed by the first Hayabusa explorer in 2010. Both the Ryugu and Itokawa asteroid exploration missions were run by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. In 2023, NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex mission will return samples from another asteroid thought to bear organic molecules.
Why study asteroids? After humans have landed men on the moon and rovers on Mars, what is the benefit of visiting the airless structures that show up in disaster films more often than the news?
Asteroid study provides information valuable for planetary defense, potential resource collection and the future of space exploration, Thompson said.
“Understanding the behavior of asteroids, where they are and what they’re made of, is really important for planetary protection,” she said. “We can learn where they’re going, what forces are acting on them, what may change their orbit, what may send them into an Earth-crossing path and what might not.”
Some asteroids may prove to be sources of elements that are not accessible or readily available on Earth, and though asteroids are improbable targets for permanent colonies, they could prove a useful means of advancing space exploration.
Michelle Thompson, a Purdue University professor of planetary sciences, displays samples of meteorites from many different asteroids that were found on Earth. She will be one of the first researchers in the world to study samples of asteroid Ryugu (not pictured) that Japan’s Hayabusa2 asteroid explorer recently returned to Earth. (Purdue University photo/John Underwood) “Certain near-Earth asteroids have been proposed as targets of human exploration, not as permanent settlements, but for storage or refueling platforms to assist longer missions,” Thompson said.
Studying asteroids and other planetary bodies relies largely on images and readings collected from a distance. Thompson’s research is fundamental to reading datasets gathered from remote sensing technologies.
Thompson studies a process called space weathering, which describes the effects of interplanetary space on planetary bodies that do not have a protective atmosphere. She and her students replicate harsh conditions of space, such as solar wind and high-velocity impacts, so that they can correctly identify and understand the chemistry of samples brought back from airless bodies.
Because asteroid surfaces do not weather the same way as Earth, re-creating these processes in a lab is essential to understanding the images and samples returned from asteroids and other airless planetary bodies.
“Dust particles and energetic ions from solar wind can cause changes in the chemistry or composition of the surface materials and of their atomic-level microstructures. These affect the optical properties that we see in data collected from remote sensing spacecraft,” Thompson said of the importance of understanding space weathering. “We can’t interpret the data properly if we don’t understand this process.”
Change in airless planetary surfaces is the focus of the LEAPS lab, which Thompson runs in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. Her team is running space weathering tests relevant to their upcoming study of the Ryugu samples, which will be unpacked and catalogued by JAXA before being distributed to the science teams. Thompson said she expects to receive materials sometime in the next fall.
Thompson is an active researcher on a number of ongoing sample return missions, including other asteroids and the moon. She and her students are preparing to study samples of asteroid Bennu collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, and she has worked extensively on samples collected from asteroid Itokawa during the first Hayabusa mission.
Thompson has studied lunar samples from nearly every Apollo mission. This includes a project started last year on a previously untouched subsurface sample collected during the Apollo 17 mission, which was commanded by Purdue alumnus Eugene Cernan in 1972. The Apollo 17 samples were kept in storage with the hopes that future research methods and technologies would offer new insight into the materials, and they were distributed as part of NASA’s Apollo Next-Generation Sample Analysisprogram.
Thompson, who worked at NASA before coming to Purdue, has an appreciation for understanding all aspects of mission design as well as training the next generation of scientists. Earlier this year, she received a NASA Early Career Fellowship in recognition of her commitment to sharing her expertise. The funds allowed her to purchase state-of-the-art equipment for the LEAPS lab and to begin developing a training series that she hopes to share with researchers throughout the field.
“We are in a rare moment in planetary science right now, with samples coming back from two asteroids and another from the moon, plus investigating samples from the 1970s that haven’t been opened yet,” she said. “It’s a good time to be in planetary science and even better to be doing so at Purdue.”
Quelle: Purdue University
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Update: 24.12.2020
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Raumfahrt - JAXA´s Asteroid Explorer Hayabusa-2 Asteroid 1999 JU3 -Update-9