NASA to Study Ryugu Asteroid Sample Collected by Japan’s Hayabusa2 in New Astromaterials Research Lab

scitechdaily.com ^ | December 8, 2020 | Charlie Plain, NASA's Johnson Space Center

[BenLurkin]

On Sunday, December 6, Hayabusa2 delivered a sample of material from asteroid Ryugu to Earth. Thanks to an agreement between JAXA and NASA, NASA will receive a portion of the Hayabusa2 sample, in exchange for a percentage of the Bennu regolith when it is delivered back to Earth by OSIRIS-REx in 2023.

Keiko Nakamura-Messenger, a scientist and collection curator with NASA’s Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division (ARES), will oversee the care and safe handling of the U.S. portion of the Hayabusa2 sample. She and her colleagues will go to work inside a brand new lab in Houston built specifically for characterizing, documenting, storing and preparing samples for study by ARES and other researchers.

The Hayabusa2 sample will become the seventh curated extraterrestrial collection humans have curated from beyond our planet, and serve as precursor for the important curation work that lies ahead in the new ARES lab when the Bennu samples arrive.

In Houston, the two scientists and their team will go to work inside the new lab. They hope the sample from JAXA will yield big discoveries despite its likely small size: probably just 10 milligrams of asteroid material. In contrast, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected at least two ounces (60 grams) of the Bennu asteroid’s surface material.

Hayabusa2 researchers expect to see a mix of organic and water-bearing compounds and minerals that will give them a lot to investigate and understand. Snead is leading the effort to work with the individual bits of the sample, many of which will be microscopic and many times smaller than a human hair.

[bitt]

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