duration/ Analysis of samples brought from the asteroid Ryugu by Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission shows that it contains some of the most primitive material studied in a laboratory on Earth, dating back only 5 million years after the formation of the solar system.
According to the scientific journal “Science”, because it is very old, it consists of the same material that formed the planets, so the asteroid Ryugu is one of the basic building blocks of the Earth.
According to the scientific summary of astronomer Majid Abu Zahira, the probe (Hayabusa 2) of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency was launched in December 2014 and reached the asteroid Ryugu in 2019. It recovered two small samples of the asteroid’s soil weighing 5.4 grams. Then the capsule containing those samples landed on Earth in December 2020.
The samples were then distributed to scientific groups, including a team at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. The team’s newly published results indicate that the composition of the samples is the closest match to a solar nebula — the cloud of gas that condensed to form the Sun and planets — that has ever been found. Therefore, the asteroid Ryugu is a component of the components that formed the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.
The findings support previous research that also concluded that the asteroid Ryugu was made of primordial matter, but until now it was not known how old it was.
Asteroid Ryugu is a carbonaceous chondrite, which means it is made up of a carbon-rich stony substance. But observations made by Hayabusa2 showed some discrepancies including a darker surface color, a greater abundance of sheet silicate materials and more pore composition than expected – so laboratory analysis was required to better understand the asteroid’s true nature.
The asteroid Ryugu is somewhat similar to the Ivuna meteorite, which fell in Tanzania in 1938 and was loaned by the Natural History Museum in London to the Yokoyama team for their study.
Using a combination of techniques including electron and X-ray microscopy, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and thermal ionization – the team found that the samples formed within liquid water, at temperatures ranging from 27 to 47 degrees Celsius, after nearly 5 million years of The formation of the solar system begins.
The asteroid Ryugu is only 900 meters in diameter, too small to generate enough heat to melt water ice. D, therefore, Ryugu itself must have originated from a larger main body that formed 2 million to 4 million years after the birth of the solar system.
Then, at some point after 5 million years, a strong collision with another asteroid caused the larger body to shatter and disintegrate and some fragments formed the asteroid Ryugu, and this idea is supported by the presence of large rocks on the surface of the asteroid Ryugu, which appears to be debris from a giant collision.
Asteroid Ryugu can be dated thanks to the abundance of elements such as hydrogen and noble gases within the samples, and is the closest known match to the composition of the visible surface of the Sun, the photosphere (light ball), which is used as a proxy for the formation of the solar nebula.
No lab-studied meteorite or asteroid has ever been found on Earth as so primitive and pure. Some meteorites, such as Evona, may have once been pure, but after falling to Earth for decades, if not centuries – exposed to moisture Weather and weather factors, then humans deal with it.
One of the main questions that needs to be answered to fully explain the origin of planets is where the formation of small bodies, such as asteroids and comets, some of which have become the foundations for building planets.
Their compositions indicate that many of these bodies did not form in their current orbits and that in the chaotic early solar system, with the turbulent disk of protoplanets and diaspora planets, small bodies were pushed around and far from where they formed.
Knowing when the original body from which the asteroid Ryugu was formed, and that it contains water, it can be said where the asteroid formed.
This is a very difficult question, there is no clear answer, but it can be said that it formed outside the snow line of the solar system, which is in the orbit of Jupiter, (the snow line is the distance from the sun where water ice can condense during the formation of the solar system).