Sprecher
Beschreibung
JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission explored the carbonaceous asteroid Ryugu and collected its sands and pebbles. On December 6, 2020, the asteroid sample was returned to the Earth. After the curatorial work at JAXA, the initial sample analysis has conducted from June 2021 to May 2022. The Initial Analysis IOM (Insoluble Organic Matter) team unveiled the chemical, isotopic, and morphological compositions of macromolecular organic solids from the Ryugu samples by coordinating spectromicroscopies, electron microscopy, and isotopic microscopy (Yabuta et al. 2023). The Initial Analysis SOM (Soluble Organic Matter) team revealed the distributions of soluble organic molecules from the Ryugu samples using high-sensitive and high-resolution mass spectrometry techniques (Naraoka et al. 2023).
Our study has proved the direct link between organic matter in the C-type asteroid Ryugu and that in primitive carbonaceous chondrites. The chemical, isotopic, and morphological diversities of Ryugu's organic matter record various degrees of parent body aqueous alteration and preserve the materials derived from nebula or molecular cloud. The organic matter in C-type asteroids could have contributed to the formation of habitable planetary environments.
