NASA astrobiologists have detected dust from the asteroid Ryugu that has been teleported to Earth. Scientists put them into liquids and gases to test them intensively to test their properties.
Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft dropped a capsule from about 120 miles (200 kilometers) above the Earth's surface onto the ground inland Australia. The capsule contains some of the solar system's most precious cargo: dust collected from the surface of the asteroid Ryugu.
By the end of 2021, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will distribute dust samples from Ryugu Star to six teams of scientists around the world. The researchers will learn more about their origins by probing, heating and examining these ancient particles.
Among the Ryugu star's investigation team will be scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center's Astrobiology Analysis Laboratory in Greenbelt, Maryland. Researchers in the Astrobiology Lab use cutting-edge instruments that are similar to those used in forensic laboratories to solve crimes. But NASA scientists aren't designed to solve cases, but to piece together the history of the early solar system by probing molecular evidence of space rocks.
"What we're doing is to help us better understand how the Earth has evolved to where it is today," said Jason P. Dworkin, director of Goddard's Astrobiology Analysis Laboratory, "how do we get life on Earth from a disk of gas and dust that surrounds the sun that we're forming, and possibly elsewhere?" Dworkin serves as the international deputy of a global team that will probe samples of Ryugu star in search of organic compounds that are precursors to life on Earth.
Ryugu is an ancient fragment of a larger asteroid that forms in clouds of gas and dust that give birth to our solar system. It is an intriguing asteroid, and Ryugu is rich in carbon, an element necessary for life.
When Dworkin and his team receive that Ryugu sample next summer, they will look for organic compounds, or carbon-based compounds, in the sample to better understand how these compounds first formed and spread throughout the solar system.
Astrobiologists are interested in organic compounds such as amino acids, which make up hundreds of thousands of protein molecules. Amino acids are also responsible for powering some of life's most basic functions, such as making new DNA. By studying differences in the types and numbers of amino acids preserved in space rocks, scientists can build a record of how these molecules formed.
Dust from Ryugu is currently about 9 million miles (15 million kilometers) away from Earth, and Ryugu's dust will be one of the best-preserved space materials scientists have ever mastered. This is the second asteroid sample ever collected in space and returned to Earth.
Before the dust samples from Ryugu arrived on Earth, the first asteroid sampling mission in history was a tiny sample of the asteroid Itogawa brought back by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in 2010. Prior to that, in 2006, NASA obtained a small sample from Comet Wild-2 as part of its Stardust mission. In 2023, NASA's OSIRIS-REx will bring back at least a dozen ounces, or hundreds of grams, of the asteroid Bennu. OSIRIS-REx has been traveling in space and has remained largely unchanged for billions of years.
"Our ultimate goal is to understand how organic compounds form in extraterrestrial environments," said Hiroshi Naraoka, a professor of geochemistry at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, "So we wanted to analyze many organic compounds, including amino acids, sulfur compounds, and nitrogen compounds, so that we could build a story about the types of organic synthesis that occur in asteroids." Naraoka is the leader of the Global Hayabusa2 team, which will analyze the organic composition of Ryugu Stardust samples.
After analyzing the composition of Ryugu, scientists will compare it to the asteroid Bennu. The asteroid Bennu, the site of OSIRIS-REx frantically grabbing samples, briefly landed on the asteroid's surface on Oct. 20.
"The two asteroids have similar shapes, but the asteroid Bennu appears to have more evidence about past water and organic compounds," Dworkin said, adding that his lab will also receive a tenth ounce, or a few grams, from Bennu. "Given that they come from different parent bodies of the asteroid belt and have different histories, it would be very interesting to see how they compare."
Analyzing asteroid particles requires a lot of experimentation
One of the most demanding projects Goddard's astronomers dealt with was analyzing the dust of Ryugu. They had to use a very small number of samples. Because Hayabusa2 expects to collect no more than a few grams of dust from Ryugu (about the weight of six coffee beans), although this is already much more than the material brought back from the Itogawa River. Despite this small weight, this will be dispersed to many scientists, which means that Dworkin and his colleagues can get only a small fraction of the original sample. The number is very small, even slightly more than a typical snowflake.
Parker, a Goddard astronomer who works with Dworkin, said: "We will be dealing with samples that are much smaller than when we have previously analyzed meteorites.
Illustration: Enlarged image of Murchison meteorite spots (about 4 micrograms) mounted on gold leaf in a glass ampoule. This was taken while NASA Goddard astronomers were about to perform a hot water extraction procedure to release any organic compounds that were soluble in water. Source: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Parker said the Goddard team, working with international peers, has been practicing working with tiny samples for more than a year. For example, they have analyzed dust particles from a meteorite called Murchison, which is rich in extremely high amounts of carbon. They then analyzed a sample without any extraterrestrial material using the same technique to make sure they could tell the difference between the two.
After Goddard scientists receive dust from Ryugu, they will suspend the particles in an aqueous solution inside a glass tube. They would then heat the solution to the temperature of boiling water, 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius), for 24 hours, trying to extract any organic compounds that could be dissolved in the water.
The researchers will run the solution with a powerful analytical machine that will separate the molecules inside by shape and mass and identify each substance present in it.
"When confronted with a truly precious sample like Ryugu Stardust, you keep thinking, 'I hope this test tube doesn't break, I hope this reaction works correctly so that these precious samples aren't wasted,'" said Hannah L. McLain, a researcher in the Dworkin analysis group. "But we've fully built our technology to make sure there's nothing wrong with experimenting, and we're excited to analyze real samples."
BY: Svetlana Shekhtman
FY: Autumn white
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