caltrek wrote: ↑Thu Jun 16, 2022 4:25 pm Dirt Scooped from Asteroid Ryugu Yields First Discoveries
by Louise Lerner
June 10, 2022
Introduction:Read more here: https://www.futurity.org/ryugu-asteroi ... 751952-2/(Futurity) After a six-year journey, a plucky spacecraft called Hayabusa2 zinged back into Earth’s atmosphere in late 2020 and landed deep in the Australian outback. When researchers from the Japanese space agency JAXA opened it, they found its precious payload sealed and intact: a handful of dirt that Hayabusa2 managed to scoop off the surface of a speeding asteroid.
Scientists have now begun to announce the first results from the analysis of this extraordinary sample. What they found suggests that this asteroid is a piece of the same stuff that coalesced into our sun four-and-a-half billion years ago.
“We previously only had a handful of these rocks to study, and all of them were meteorites that fell to Earth and were stored in museums for decades to centuries, which changed their compositions,” says geochemist Nicolas Dauphas, one of the three University of Chicago researchers who worked with a Japan-led team of scientists to analyze the fragments.
“Having pristine samples from outer space is simply incredible. They are witnesses from parts of the solar system that we have not otherwise explored.”
In 2018, Hayabusa2 landed atop a moving asteroid named Ryugu and collected particles from above and below its surface. After spending a year and a half orbiting the asteroid, it returned to Earth with a sealed capsule containing about five grams of dust and rock. Scientists around the world have been eagerly anticipating the unique sample—one that could help redefine our understanding of how planets evolve and how our solar system formed.
Dude I think the governments especially here in the USA, at least, have far more advanced space technology than they are saying. NASA does have security clearances after all since it is a government organization. I just find it incredible for them to land these probes on fast moving rocks and go under their surfaces to collect fresh reliable samples. I do not believe simple radio wave transmissions can account for all this. Its a great feat of course!weatheriscool wrote: ↑Sat Jul 09, 2022 6:20 am Study provides new insights about the surface and structure of asteroid Bennu
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-insights- ... bennu.html
by Southwest Research InstituteWhen NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected samples from asteroid Bennu's surface in 2020, forces measured during the interaction provided scientists with a direct test of the poorly understood near-subsurface physical properties of rubble-pile asteroids. Now, a Southwest Research Institute-led study has characterized the layer just below the asteroid's surface as composed of weakly bound rock fragments containing twice the void space as the overall asteroid.
"The low gravity of rubble-pile asteroids such as Bennu weakens its near-subsurface by not compressing the upper layers, minimizing the influence of particle cohesion," said SwRI's Dr. Kevin Walsh, lead author of a paper about this research published in the journal Science Advances. "We conclude that a low-density, weakly bound subsurface layer should be a global property of Bennu, not just localized to the contact point."
Fitting its designation as a "rubble-pile asteroid," Bennu is a spheroidal collection of rock fragments and debris 1,700 feet in diameter and held together by gravity. It is thought to have been formed after a collision involving a larger main-asteroid-belt object. Rocks are scattered across its heavily cratered surface, indicating that it has had a rough-and-tumble existence since being liberated from its much larger parent asteroid some millions or billions of years ago.