New discoveries about rock samples brought back from asteroid Ryugu

New research shows that rock samples collected by a Japanese probe from the asteroid Ryugu were formed in high temperature conditions more than 4.5 billion years ago.

Japanese experts have just announced important research results on rock samples brought back by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft from the asteroid Ryugu. According to them, these are the oldest rock samples ever found in the Solar System. Photo: Hiroshima University/Masaaki Miyahara.

The research team, which included scientists from research institutes including Hokkaido University, said the rock samples collected from the asteroid Ryugu were formed in high temperatures 4.5673 billion years ago, shortly after the formation of the Solar System. Photo: DARTS archive /Meli thev via Wikimedia Commons.

According to experts, these rock samples are older than the asteroid Ryugu itself, which was formed from minerals reacting with water about 4.562 billion years ago. Photo: Robert Lea (created with Canva)/NASA/JAXA, University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University, Aizu University, AIST.

This led the team to speculate that the asteroid Ryugu likely formed in an area far from the Sun. Photo: 2020 Tatsumi et al.

The Hayabusa2 probe was launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in December 2014 with a mission to explore the asteroid Ryugu (162173). This asteroid is about 290 million km from Earth, has a diameter of about 900m, and orbits the Sun between Earth and Mars. Photo: 2019 Seiji Sugita et al.

Researchers classify Ryugu as a C-type (carbonaceous) asteroid. Like other C-type asteroids, Ryugu likely contains material from the nebula – the giant cloud of dust and gas that gave birth to the Sun and its planets billions of years ago. Image: 2019 Seiji Sugita et al., Science.

To decode the mysteries of the asteroid Ryugu as well as the early Solar System, in 2019, Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft collected rock and soil samples from the surface of the asteroid Ryugu and successfully transported them back to Earth in December 2020. Photo: JAXA.

Experts then meticulously studied rock samples collected from Ryugu in the hope of soon having a comprehensive view of the origin of this asteroid, including the time of formation, age when exposed to water... Photo: JAXA.

Readers are invited to watch the video : Universe map with more than 900,000 stars, galaxies and black holes. Source: THĐT1.

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