(Newser)
– It looks like small fragments of coal, but soil samples collected from an asteroid and returned to Earth by a Japanese spacecraft were hardly disappointing. The samples of the Japanese space officials described on Thursday are large by 0.4 inches and are strong, they do not break when they are picked up or poured into another container, reports AP. The smaller black and sandy granules that the probe collected and returned separately were described last week. Last year, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft received the two sets of samples from two locations on the asteroid Ryugu, more than 190 million miles from Earth. They escaped from space on a target in the Australian Outback, and the samples were brought to Japan in early December.
The sand grains described by the Japanese aerospace exploration agency last week come from the spacecraft’s first touchdown in April 2019. The larger fragments come from the compartment allocated for the second touchdown on Ryugu, said Tomohiro Usui, a space scientist . To obtain the second set of samples, Hayabusa2 dropped an impact element to explode beneath the asteroid’s surface, collecting material that would not be affected by space radiation and other environmental factors. Usui said the size differences suggest a different hardness of the bedrock on the asteroid. JAXA continues the initial examination of asteroid samples before more complete studies next year, after which some of the samples will be shared with NASA and other international space agencies for further research.
(Read more about asteroids.)