The asteroid Ryugu, or its full name 162173 Ryugu, is a near-Earth object and a potentially hazardous asteroid of the Apollo group. It measures approximately 1 kilometer in diameter and has been orbiting the Earth for more than a year.
A capsule manages to get samples of that asteroid, and it had landed near Woomera in South Australia on Saturday evening (GMT).
In Australia, a recovery team is sent out to retrieve the valuable Hayabusa-2 capsule, finding its parachute draped over a bush.
After nearly a year of investigating Ryugu, the 16 kg capsule was finally fired from the Hayabusa-2, its fireball, traveling at 11km/s, visible to the eye of witnesses. The capsule was officially founded at 19:47 GMT.
“Hayabusa-2 is home,” Dr. Yuichi Tsuda, project manager for the mission, said at a press conference on Sunday morning (GMT) in Sagamihara, Japan.
“We collected the treasure box,” he said, adding: “The capsule collection was perfectly done.”
He said there was no damage to the container. Dr. Hitoshi Kuninaka, director-general of Japan’s Institute for Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), said: “We started the development of Hayabusa-2 in 2011. I think the dream has come true.”
He added that they have done everything according to plan, and with a sample obtained, they can move on to their next stage in space development.
The next stage is where they will aim to bring back samples from Mars’ largest moon, Phobos, called the MMX mission.
Satoru Nakazawa, Hayabusa-2 sub-manager at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa), who was part of the operation at Woomera along with the Royal Australian Air Force picked up the signal the capsule was emitting to get its location.
“We went there with the helicopter and it was emitting the beacon signal. But at that time, it was still dark, so it was unclear [where it was]. I was very, very nervous.
“We flew over the area [where it landed] many times and I thought maybe that was where it was. Then the Sun rose and we could visually confirm the existence of the capsule. We thought: ‘Wow, we found it!”
“But we had a very jittery, frustrating time until sunrise,” Satoru said.
Alan Fitzsimmons, a professor from Queen’s University Belfast said that this sample would give us deeper knowledge about how the Solar System came to be, but it could also give answers to ‘these’ types of objects.
Asteroids are basically leftover debris from the formation of the Solar System, essentially making them the same material as the Earth.
“Having samples from an asteroid-like Ryugu will be really exciting for our field. We think Ryugu is made up of super-ancient rocks that will tell us how the Solar System formed,” Prof Sara Russell, leader of the planetary materials group at London’s Natural History Museum, told BBC News.
Using Ryugu to study how the materials we see today on Earth were delivered, some might say that water comes from these asteroids through a comet.
“It may be that we’ve been looking to comets all this time for delivering water to Earth in the early Solar System. Perhaps we should have been looking a bit closer to home, at these primitive but rather rocky asteroids,” Prof Fitzsimmons told BBC News.
“Indeed that’s something that will be looked at very carefully in these Ryugu samples.”
Researchers from multiple countries, including Japan and the U.K. will be studying the samples. In the UK, Prof Russell’s team at the Natural History Museum and scientists from the universities of Manchester and Glasgow will get to study the material.
Dr. Sarah Crowther is one of several researchers at Manchester expecting to receive samples next year. She explained: “Different labs contribute different expertise, which all helps in understanding the material collected.”
After delivering the capsule, the Hayabusa-2 spacecraft is sent to another mission, traveling to a much smaller asteroid, expected to reach it in 2031.
Source: BBC News