Ryugu has a high concentration of organic matter.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — There is a space object named asteroid Ryugu which so intrigued scientists. Spaceship Hayabusa 2 launched by the Japanese Space Agency JAXA in 2014 to visit the asteroid Ryugu. The craft arrived at the asteroid in June 2018 and spent nearly a year studying it from orbit.
Hayabusa 2 even sent four rover to the surface of the asteroid. After departing, it sailed past Earth in December 2020 and dropped a Ryugu sample.
The most interesting of all the scientific findings of that extraordinary journey is perhaps this: Asteroid Ryugu may not be an asteroid at all. The asteroid could be just a comet remnant.
Asteroid Ryugu is a debris-heap asteroid, according to the Hayabusa 2 mission. Like certain asteroids that are shaped like a spinning top, the asteroid’s rapid rotation shapes it into this shape.
“The widely accepted formation scenario for Ryugu is a catastrophic collision between a larger asteroid and the subsequent slow gravitational accumulation of impact debris,” according to the authors. Universe Today.
A lot of information from Hayabusa 2 supports the theory that Ryugu is an asteroid, which astronomers have suspected since its discovery in 1999. However, one piece of data that doesn’t match the asteroid description stands out: Ryugu has a high concentration of organic matter.
Why does Ryugu have so much concentrated organic matter if it is a pile of asteroid debris formed from the collision of two smaller asteroids?
That question is at the heart of a new study published in The Astronomical Journal Letters. Nagoya City University Associate Professor Hitoshi Miura is the lead author.
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