Samples returned to
Earth by a Japanese asteroid mission are the most untouched materials ever studied in the solar system.
The asteroid Ryugu
contains some of the most primitive material ever studied in a laboratory on Earth dating back to just 5 million years
Because it is so old,
it is made of the same stuff that formed the planets. "Ryugu is one of the building blocks of Earth
The Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency's Hayabusa2 spacecraft launched in December 2014 and arrived at asteroid Ryugu in 2019.
It retrieved two small
samples of regolith, amounting to 5.4 grams, from the asteroid. These samples then landed on Earth in a capsule
team has identified more
than 20 types of amino acids which are the starting point for the proteins that living organisms produce