Scientists have found water and organic matter on the surface of an asteroid sample collected from the solar system – the first time such material has been found on an asteroid.
The sample, which was only a single grain, comes from the asteroid ‘Itokawa’ by the Japanese Aviation Reconnaissance Agency (Jaxa)’s first Hayabusa mission in 2010.
It shows both water and organic matter not coming from a strange world, but from the asteroid itself. Researchers at Royal Holloway, University of London, suggest that the asteroid evolved over billions of years by incorporating the liquid and organic matter in the same way as the Earth.
The asteroid withstood extreme heat, dehydration and crushing, but managed to be reformed and rehydrated using material it picked up. The study also shows that S-type asteroids – the most common that come to Earth – can contain the raw components of life.
It could rewrite our knowledge of the history of life on earth, having previously focused on carbon-rich C-type asteroids.
“The Hayabusa mission was a robotic spacecraft developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to return samples of a small near-asteroid called Itokawa, for detailed analysis in laboratories on Earth,” said Dr Queenie Chan of the Department of Earth Sciences. in Royal Holloway, said in a statement.
After carefully studying an international researcher, we kept analysis of a single grain, nicknamed ‘Amazon’, primitive (unheated) and processed (heated) organic matter within ten microns (one thousandth of a centimeter) from a distance .
‘The organic material that has been heated indicates that the asteroid has been heated to more than 600 degrees Celsius in the past. The presence of unheated organic matter, very close to it, means that the autumn of primitive organic matter arrived on the surface of Itokawa after the asteroid had cooled. ”
The research of scientists, entitled “Organic matter and water from the asteroid Itokawa”, was published in the journal Scientific reports.
“These findings are very exciting, as they reveal intricate details of the history of an asteroid and how its evolution is so similar to that of the prebiotic earth,” said Dr.
It is hoped that the analysis of this sample will provide the basis for more detailed analysis of other samples. Jaxa’s Hayabusa2 mission returned pieces of the asteroid Ryugu last year, bringing back a piece of celestial rock just 38 centimeters in diameter.
In 2019, samples from the asteroid Bennu revealed that it was in fact older than scientists previously thought, and this gave a new look at the evolution of the solar system.
Bennu’s observations also confirm the presence of widespread and abundant hydrated materials, as well as the surprising presence of large rocks.