Scientists confirm Hayabusa-2’s return capsule brought back material from Ryugu
Based on their first observations of the return capsule from Hayabusa-1, Japanese scientists yesterday confirmed that it successfully has returned material from the asteroid Ryugu.
JAXA said in a statement that they observed the sandy material at the entrance of the collection chamber, but have yet to look inside to see if more asteroid dust is lurking there. It is only the second time that scientists have returned material from an asteroid.
This find in the entrance portends a gold mine of material in the collection chamber itself.
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Based on their first observations of the return capsule from Hayabusa-1, Japanese scientists yesterday confirmed that it successfully has returned material from the asteroid Ryugu.
JAXA said in a statement that they observed the sandy material at the entrance of the collection chamber, but have yet to look inside to see if more asteroid dust is lurking there. It is only the second time that scientists have returned material from an asteroid.
This find in the entrance portends a gold mine of material in the collection chamber itself.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
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I read that the estimated combined mass of the two samples (surface and subsurface) is only 100 mg. Or 0.0035 ounces. I suppose that is enough to achieve the science goals of the mission, but maybe it will limit the sharing of it with other science teams that would like to make some specific analysis, now and in the future.
Handling “soil” on celestial bodies robotically seems to be difficult. Both current asteroid missions had different problems and Insight can’t get its hammer drill to move into to Mars’ surface. Asteroid mining obviously isn’t like picking up gold nuggets from the ground in Klondike. Jeffrey Tucker (the Mises Institute guy) once talked about a book about three guys from New York who went to the west coast during the gold rush. How did they get there? They walked! And two of them died on the way. The third never found any gold but got rich from selling equipment to the gold diggers. So it is never easy on the frontier and one never knows how it turns out.