162173 Ryugu

They brought back pieces of an asteroid called Itokawa in 2010.

Then they did it again with another asteroid called Ryugu in 2020.

Both times success, both times history made.

So when Japan says they're going to pick up a piece... of a moon on mars or mars's moon and bring it home i believe them they burned that confidence so yeah mark your calendars october 19th a spacecraft named double mx carrying a tiny rover is going to retrieve a 10 grams sample from mars's news right that was really interesting one more story of course to go and this one is for everyone who has ever looked up at the night sky and wish they could see more because what's coming in 2028 might just be the most spectacular thing you've ever seen with your own eyes we're talking shooting stars and lots of them and it's all because of a planet you know very well stay with me this is keller mastro coming back right after this keep it right here with me on pulse 95.

But if those reactors are not restarted, some government officials are concerned the long-term energy goal may not be feasible.

Researchers at Japan's Hokkaido University and other institutes say the Ryugu asteroid explored by a Japanese probe appears to be a remnant of an early celestial body in the solar system from more than 4.5 billion years ago.

The group analyzed mineral samples from Ryugu collected by the probe Hayabusa2.

The researchers say their analysis indicates the parent body of the asteroid was formed earlier than 4.5653 billion years ago.

They say this dates back to the period less than two million years after the beginning of the formation of the solar system.

Previous studies found that Ryugu emerged from a collection of fragments after its parent body broke apart, but it was not clear when the body was created.

The group says the latest findings could provide a clue to the formation of celestial bodies in the solar system.

We would also like to examine the time of formation of another asteroid, samples of which were brought back by the US space agency, NASA.

Give me that chaotic energy, I guess.

According to some scientists, a space object containing water happened to collide with Earth like a cosmic water balloon, and voila! Blue planet was born! We know that might be possible because the Ryugu and Bennu asteroids orbiting in our solar system have shown evidence of the same type of water that exists in Earth's oceans.

So it's possible that asteroids are responsible for bringing water to the planet.

Or there may have been water on Earth before any asteroid strikes.

The sample return missions represent a golden age for planetary archaeology.

The Japanese Hayabusa 2 mission successfully retrieved and returned samples from the asteroid Ryugu.

And NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission recently delivered a massive, pristine sample from the asteroid Bennu.

Both Ryugu and Bennu are carbonaceous CC rocks.

They represent the cold, dark outer solar system.

When we finally got these pristine samples into terrestrial laboratories, what did the mass spectrometers reveal?

Mm-hmm.

Uh, in October, OSIRIS-REx, one of the asteroid missions, uh, touches on, uh, asteroid Bennu and collects a sample there.

In fact, it does a little too well because when it touches, uh, Bennu is very much a rubble pile, and all that gravel goes everywhere.

Hmm.

They have to come up with such technical ma- maneuvers as shaking a little off [laughs] to try and get the thing closed up so they can put it in the capsule to return.

Hmm.

Uh, another asteroid mission at the end of the year in December, Hayabusa2, will actually successfully return its sample payload from the asteroid Ryugu, and that is a JAXA mission.

A little recap on what SpaceX did in 2020.

Absolutely.

In 2020, the unmanned Hayabusa2 spacecraft successfully returned to Earth with samples it had collected from an asteroid named Ryugu, located hundreds of millions of kilometers away.

It brought back exactly 5.4 grams of rock and dust.

At the time, that was a massive scientific triumph.

That mission confirmed that the ingredients for DNA and RNA exist out there, at least on Bennu.

Ryugu is a carbon-rich asteroid that loops around the sun somewhere between Earth and Mars.

Its parent body may have formed way out in the far reaches of our solar system before drifting inwards.

So it's kind of like a chemical time capsule from the birth of our solar system some 4.6 billion years ago.

An earlier sampling of Ryugu had turned up a tiny sample of the RNA building block uracil.

So this time, Japan's space agency wanted to get an even bigger sample.

The Hayabusa2 spacecraft scooped up Ryugu's dust in space in 2019.

It sealed the dust in an airtight capsule that landed back on Earth without ever touching Earth's air or biology.