News Highlight
Materials like Ryugu space rock make up 5% of the planet’s mass, likely helping make the planet habitable.
Key Takeaway
- A recent study suggests that the genesis of the planet may be revealed by a piece of the space rock Ryugu that came back to Earth almost two years ago.
- Space rocks like the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu could have provided around 5% of the components that came together to form Earth more than 4.5 billion years ago.
- Moreover, in 2020, the Japanese space agency’s Hayabusa 2 asteroid sample-return mission brought samples of Ryugu to Earth. In 2014, the mission was started.
Asteroid Ryugu
- About
- It is a member of the Apollo group and a potentially dangerous near-Earth object.
- In addition, it has a diameter of almost one kilometre.
- The Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project made Ryugu’s discovery in 1999.
- Between Mars and Earth, Ryugu orbits the sun, occasionally straddling our planet’s orbit.
- Ryugu is one of the darkest celestial bodies in the solar system.
- Finally, it is also unusually dry, which is strange given that its parent body should have been abundant in water ice.
- Hayabusa2’s visit to Ryugu
- In 2006, JAXA decided to fund the Hayabusa2 mission, and in December 2014, the spacecraft was launched.
- The probe spent 16 months orbiting Ryugu after arriving there in the summer of 2018.
- Hayabusa2 was engaged in various tasks in the vicinity of Ryugu, including taking pictures and using its instruments to study the asteroid.
- As practice for its sample retrieval, Hayabusa2 repeatedly touched Ryugu’s surface before capturing its prized prey in February 2019.
- In November 2019, Hayabusa2 started its return journey after spending more time observing the asteroid from orbit.
Hayabusa 2
- The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has chosen to create a crater on the asteroid 1999 JU3 (Ryugu) to gather samples from below the earth.
- Hayabusa 2 was launched in December 2014 with a six-year mission in mind.
- Before returning to Earth in December 2020, it will spend 18 months at Ryugu investigating the asteroid after arriving there in July 2018.
Space Rocks
- The path through the solar system is a rocky road.
- Furthermore, all kinds of tiny bits of rock, metal, and ice are constantly in motion as they orbit the Sun, including asteroids, comets, and Kuiper Belt Objects, and some of them include:
- Asteroids
- Firstly, asteroids are rocky, airless worlds that orbit our Sun.
- They are leftovers from the creation of our solar system and can be as big as a major metropolis in width or as long as a car.
- Additionally, asteroids have various chemical makes up; some are metallic, while others are heavily carbon-rich, giving them a coal-black hue.
- Most of the asteroids in our solar system reside in a region called the main asteroid belt.
- Comets
- Comets also orbit the Sun, but they are more like snowballs than space rocks.
- Each comet’s nucleus, or centre, is composed of ice chunks of frozen gases and small pieces of rock and dust.
- A comet warms up and ejects dust and gases as it approaches the Sun in its orbit.
- Furthermore, it causes in forming a giant, glowing ball called a coma around its nucleus, along with two tails – one made of dust and the other of excited gas (ions).
- Meteoroids
- Meteoroids are fragments and debris in space resulting from collisions among asteroids, comets, moons, and planets.
- Moreover, they are among the smallest “space rocks.”
- We can see them when they appear as meteors and meteor showers and rip through our atmosphere.
- Meteors
- Firstly, meteors are meteoroids that travel at extremely high speeds through the atmosphere of the Earth.
- In addition, they glow and leave a streak of light in the sky because of the pressure and heat they produce as they push through the air.
- Before they hit the ground, the majority burn up. They are frequently referred to as “shooting stars.”
- Rock, metal, or a combination of the two may make up the majority of meteors.
- Meteor Showers
- Firstly, several meteors per hour can usually be seen on any night.
- Sometimes the amount substantially rises; these situations are known as meteor showers.
- They happen as the Earth travels through cometary particle trails.
- Moreover, the particles burn up as soon as they reach Earth’s atmosphere, leaving the sky with hundreds or thousands of dazzling streaks.
- Hence, several showers occur each year when Earth’s orbit passes through the same regions of comet debris; we can schedule when to view meteor showers.
Recent or ongoing missions to remote, rocky locations by NASA
- OSIRIS-REx
- New Horizons
- Psyche
- Lucy
- Dawn
Pic Courtesy: Down to earth
Content Source: Down to Earth