(Newser)
– They look like small pieces of coal, but soil samples collected from an asteroid and returned to Earth by a Japanese spacecraft were not disappointing. The samples that Japanese space authorities described on Thursday are as large as 0.4 inches and hard as a rock, not breaking when collected or dumped in another container, reports the AP. Smaller granules of black sand that the spacecraft collected and returned separately were described last week. The Hayabusa2 spacecraft took the two sets of samples last year from two locations on the asteroid Ryugu, more than 190 million miles from Earth. He threw them from space on a target in the Australian Outback, and the samples were brought to Japan in early December.
The granules of sand that the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency described last week were from the spacecraft’s first touch in April 2019. The largest fragments were from the compartment allocated for the second touch on Ryugu, said Tomohiro Usui, a space materials scientist. To obtain the second set of samples, Hayabusa2 launched an impactor to explode below the surface of the asteroid, collecting material that would not be affected by space radiation and other environmental factors. Usui said the size differences suggest a different hardness than the asteroid rock. JAXA is continuing the initial examination of asteroid samples before further studies next year, after which some of the samples will be shared with NASA and other international space agencies for further research.
(Read more asteroid stories.)